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City OKs pilot project aimed at 'speeding up' council inquiries

'This kind of process will really improve that communication methodology between staff and members of council,' said city CAO Gayle Jackson
2023-02-07-don
Orillia Mayor Don McIsaac and city council has agreed to a new process aimed at streamlining council inquiries.

The way city councillors stickhandle issues on to the public radar and seek help from municipal staff to address those issues is about to change as part of a pilot project.

The city’s inquiry motion process allows council members to request that city staff research and prepare options to consider on a variety of issues, ranging from dog parks, to short term rentals, and more.

Should the majority of council approve an inquiry, city staff then delve into the issue, do research, and, eventually, draft a report for council’s consideration at a later date.

At a special council meeting Monday, council approved a number of changes meant to streamline the process and to make more efficient use of city staff’s time, as a pilot project that will run through the first quarter of 2024.

Moving forward, councillors will file their inquiries through an online portal that is accessible by all members of council, where the appropriate city staff may review their requests. 

For shorter, easy-to-answer inquiries, city staff will provide a response for consideration on an upcoming council agenda. For longer inquiries, city staff will outline the resources required to answer the inquiry, for council’s consideration, before moving forward with a full report.

Previously, inquiries were submitted to city clerks, with no centralized online portal where all members of council could see the requests. 

After reviewing 145 inquiries made over the past seven years, staff found similar questions were answered on multiple occasions.

“At any point in the future, a member of council, looking back, … (can) review this list and easily see what was asked at this time last year, what was the response to that,” said Rebecca Zanussi, executive assistant to the CAO/communications coordinator.

“There are a lot of technology benefits to this and a lot of efficiency benefits as well," said Zanussi.

“One of the things that we recognize is that there's lots of conversations that occur, but sometimes those conversations are just with one member of council and the rest of council does not understand they may have the same question,” added CAO Gayle Jackson. “This kind of process will really improve that communication methodology between staff and members of council.”

The new method will also include a standardized process, where council members provide relevant background information and context to their requests, which will be accessible — along with any council decisions, or subsequent staff reports — to members of council in the future.

“They would start by filling in just some key information about the inquiry motion,” Zanussi said, regarding the topic being asked about, any specific questions, whether constituents raised the issue, and so on.

For the new inquiry motion process, city staff recommended that all responses to council inquiries get forwarded to the city’s council information package as a memo, where council members could then pull the item for consideration at a future council meeting.

Some members of council, however, expressed concern with that process, and Coun. Jay Fallis successfully introduced an amendment to forward all inquiry responses directly to council agendas.

“I don't want to approve a process that it becomes tougher to bring something forward to council,” Fallis said, adding that “very few constituents” read the council information package, which could create transparency issues.

Coun. Tim Lauer, similarly, expressed concern that inquiries could be delayed by weeks through the process of pulling them from the information package to the next available agenda.

In the end, however, council got on board with the new process.

“I think it will be an incredible tool. I think it will actually speed things up,” said Coun. David Campbell. “The way I see it, we’ll get our answers faster, which I think is great. It will prevent a few things from happening that happen now, and that is where we bring up some inquiry issues that we … had already dealt with and had answers for, and and we ended up (with) that sort of repetitiveness. It takes care of that.”


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Greg McGrath-Goudie

About the Author: Greg McGrath-Goudie

Greg has been with Village Media since 2021, where he has worked as an LJI reporter for CollingwoodToday, and now as a city hall/general assignment reporter for OrilliaMatters
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