Council keeping meetings as short as possible, but at what cost?

Peterborough’s current city council and administration are making a point of what is often referred to as running a tight ship: be efficient with time and effective with policy.

That means keeping council meetings as short as possible while allowing full and open debate by the public and council members.

At the administrative level, the main move in that direction has been shortening the approval period for housing development projects.

Two less obvious examples played out over the past month. Both raise questions as to how far the sails should be let out — full speed ahead is not always the best course of action.

Last week, council voted 8-2 to hire architects to design extensive renovations to the current police headquarters and the newly purchased Calvary Pentecostal Church building on Lansdowne Street, where police administration will move.

Total renovation costs are estimated at $40 million.

City staff recommended that Shoalts and Zaback Architects Ltd., which has been working on the police station project for six years, be hired without going to other firms for bids.

The company would do the work for $3.5 million, which several senior staff said was roughly 20 per cent less than the going rate. Coun. Joy Lachica suggested a tender could produce a lower bid. Staff reiterated that Shoalts and Zaback is familiar with the project and would do the work for eight per cent of total costs. Since the standard rate is 10 to 12 per cent, a bidding process would likely increase costs.

However, Coun. Alex Bierk was still unhappy with sole sourcing and wanted to speak.

Instead, Coun. Gary Baldwin asked that the question be called, a motion that is always in order and ends debate.

Traditionally, every councillor gets to speak once on any subject. Bierk had not spoken yet. However, the contract was obviously going to be approved and Bierk has shown a tendency to drag debate out on lost causes.

Baldwin’s motion passed 7-3, a clear message to Bierk that he should get on board with the tighter ship agenda. But it was premature.

Giving Bierk the opportunity to speak once would have cost little time. If he went on at length, a motion to call the question would have been more effective and fairer.

The second message was buried deep in a necessary “tighten the ship” move: reducing the number of portfolio chairs councillors hold to 12 from 27.

It was less obvious, harder to decipher and potentially more troublesome.

During discussion, Mayor Jeff Leal warned that under the current system, staff could be violating the Ontario Municipal Act when discussing confidential information with portfolio chairs.

Exactly how that might happen wasn’t spelled out. But the definition of “confidential information” in a bylaw setting up the new portfolio system causes concern.

Two of four confidentiality examples are based on legislated standards and are straightforward, a third gets into staff exercising discretion about what is public information and what can be withheld.

The fourth is a blatant overstep: any information identified by a senior staff member as confidential.

The bylaw references to information that could legally be presented in a closed meeting, or denied public release under Freedom of Information legislation, cover every legitimate need for secrecy.

Allowing staff to add anything they might want to keep hidden from the public is dangerous.

Once the precedent is set for information sharing between staff and councillors it could easily be applied to items of business council should be handling in public meetings.

That secrecy catch-all should be removed from the bylaw, which would be a public commitment that focus on faster service won’t trample on legislated standards for open government.