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Mono man questions public meetings’ effectiveness

November 21, 2024   ·   0 Comments

By JAMES MATTHEWS

Mono council encourages residents’ unlimited participation in town hall meetings.

The issue of regular open town hall meetings, as opposed to town council meetings, was broached Nov. 12 by resident Lewis Baker.

Baker asked how Mono residents could “convince” town council to “take the necessary procedures to cause a town hall meeting to be held in the middle of April 2025 with no resident restrictions and encourage their unlimited participation?”

He said such a meeting would fulfill a commitment made by Mayor John Creelman.

“I and many other citizens are tired of what seems to be a calculated process by council over the last five or six years to reduce the physical presence of Mono citizens at council meetings,” Baker wrote in his question to council. “I was a sole attendee at one meeting in 2023 and one in 2024.”

Creelman assumed there would indeed be a town hall meeting in April next year.

“The past few town hall meetings that we’ve had there have been no restrictions in terms of topic or failing to get around to acknowledge everyone,” Creelman said. “We go out of our way to do that.”

Such open town hall meetings often have a specific topic, reason or concern for which residents can provide input. Council hasn’t yet decided what the topic for the April 2025 town hall meeting will be, Creelman said.

“But it would be my intention to have sufficient time for unlimited participation as encouraged by Mr. Baker,” Creelman said.

Councillor Melinda Davie said the last meeting concerned road safety and involved a presentation by the Ontario Provincial Police.

“It was very informative,” she said. “And then the question period did get kind of funnelled into a lot of questions about the same topic.”

Davie suggested Baker could be misperceiving that aspect of the last meeting. Perhaps Baker’s wish is to eliminate any kind of educational component to the meeting and open the whole time to questions from residents.

“It would be worth asking the people whether they want an education portion of it,” Davie said.

“And there’s also the possibility that we could turn to the Mono-Mulmur (Citizens’) Coalition to organize and chair such a meeting,” Creelman said. “If there’s some thought that council is too much invested in the thing one way or the other, put the organization in the hands of an independent third party.”

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