Council works from home, despite odd flushing toilet

It was an unexpected but unmistakable sound in council chambers: a toilet being flushed.

Mute button mistakes have become an occupational hazard at Calgary city council meetings, which have been running remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic.

As councillors and city staffers follow public health advice to work from home if possible, only one member of council is physically in the room to chair each meeting. Apart from a handful of city staff helping to run the meeting, practically everyone else phones in.

Even public hearings are now happening over the phone, with Calgarians calling in to give their input on council business instead of going in-person to city hall.

And that’s brought a familiar refrain to city council: make sure — really, really make sure — that you’ve pressed the mute button.

With multiple phone lines open

in council chambers, meetings have been interrupted by dogs barking, car alarms and accidental snippets of private conversations.

“How many times will I need to do this today? I just need to remind everyone to please mute,” Mayor Naheed Nenshi said after an audible flushing incident in April. “We can hear everything.” Chairing a recent committee meeting in which a staggering 121 members of the public phoned in to have their say, Coun. Gian-carlo Carra declared: “a proper use of the mute button is a proper exercise of citizenship.”

The Ward 9 councillor spent much of the two-day meeting repeatedly urging people to make sure they were on mute when it wasn’t their turn as the committee plowed through hours of speakers.

“I sort of became a living meme,” Carra said in an interview.

“I have a very low tolerance for bad sound quality, so I was a real pill. But it seemed to work.”

Carra sees the scale of that public hearing as a “litmus test” for the new way council is doing business — and after a meeting that saw more than 100 people successfully sharing their views, he said “there’s no denying” the remote engagement process worked.

To say the least, all of this is unprecedented for city council.

It was only two years ago that councillors even got the option to call into a meeting.

And council had to change its own procedural rules to allow more than half of council to participate in meetings remotely.

City clerk Laura Kennedy said as it became clear that council meetings would need to be done differently because of COVID -19, she reached out to other cities to see how they were handling things.

She mostly found uncharted territory. In Toronto, for example, council meetings had simply been cancelled.

So city staff in Calgary put together a system combining a teleconference and digital screen sharing, letting council members watch presentations as they happen, ask questions and vote from home. For public hearings, clerks email instructions to people who want to participate and then patch them into a teleconference.

It was a big change that happened quickly but, so far, democracy via conference call seems to be working.

“We’ve actually done fairly well,” Kennedy said. “I can’t say we haven’t had some things that have been a bit of a surprise, but we mustered on really fast.”

If she knew how to solve mute button woes, “I would probably be a millionaire right now,” she said with a laugh. “I think everyone working in remote meetings right now suffers from that same problem.”

CITY BUSINESS MOVES ONLINE

Coun. Druh Farrell said the shift to working from home has sped up other digital moves, too. Councillors have been talking about using online-only agendas for years, and now that’s how things work by necessity — no more printing out hundreds of pages each meeting for councillors and staff.

“We won’t go back,” she said. The Ward 7 councillor is bringing a motion to council’s Monday meeting to ensure councillors report who they’re meeting with during the pandemic, the same way they would if they hosted someone at their city hall office.

And she sees potential in letting Calgarians participate in public hearings over the phone after the pandemic, too. That way, she said, they don’t have to miss work or worry about childcare to wait their turn to speak to council in person.

“For the occasional toilet flushing or somebody slurping their coffee, it’s been remarkably easy,” she said.

But, she adds: “it’ll never replace the face to face.”

Unlike some other municipalities, Calgary hasn’t been using video conferencing for meetings. And Coun. Jeff Davison says it’s odd not to be able to look people in the eye during debates.

“Sometimes I feel like I’m going crazy on the phone, and then there’s just silence because everybody else is trying to figure out where the mute button is, and you’re like, ‘Can anybody hear me? Am I ranting to myself?’ ” he says.

Coun. Jeromy Farkas says it’s an odd time to be a politician, with everyone trying to make sense of their jobs without being able to speak to people in person.

“Sometimes you can say something and it may be taken the wrong way just because you can’t see the other person and their facial expression.”

But city business goes on and most councillors say they’re feeling more comfortable working from home and handling the new reality of their work, even through the awkward moments.

“There will be some bloopers, there’s no question,” Farrell said.

And if council can hear someone’s toilet flush, she added, “we’re all listening for them to wash their hands.”