Councillor Cunningham reinforces his desire for more information sharing with the public

The theme of how the city communicates with its residents received a two pronged approach at Tuesday evening's City Council Session, first with Councillor Mirau's motion related to Closed Council sessions and then with some follow up notes on related topics from Councillor Barry Cunningham.

For his part, Mr. Cunningham returned to a proposal that he has raised at council in the past, reminding council that he would like to see the various department heads for the city provide public reports at City Council, adding that the communication project could also be expanded to include the Fire Department, RCMP detachment and Airport Society to name a few of the services that he believed could participate.

"Now that we've passed the one about closed meetings, I've brought this topic up numerous times before and it seems to go nowhere, although we get yes we should do that. I would like to see the department heads come before council and give us a report on progress of projects and projects that are in the future. And I would also like that to include the RCMP giving a monthly or quarterly report, they indicated they are more than willing to do this and other communities do that. And also our Fire Department and from there, we can branch out to the airport and other places and just let the public know what's going on"

Mr. Cunningham noted that Council sessions are a venue that get reported on in many ways, whether through Social media, the newspaper, or from people watching on TV and how he believes that it's very important to the residents of the community to know what council is doing.

Mayor Brain addressed the topic by first observing how he believed that it was a great idea, adding that now that the Councillor had mentioned it he did remember him bringing the theme to council in previous sessions.  He observed that sometimes council gets so busy, that they forget to enable some of those things, expressing his desire to work out some form of regular reporting at Council.

The theme of more communication is one we've explored in the past on the blog noting many of the same areas that Mr. Cunningham explored on Tuesday.

As we outlined on the blog yesterday in relation to some concerns on safety in the McKay street area, other communities across the Northwest host department and service officials who provide updates to the community on a range of issues.

The full exchange on the topic can be found from the City's YouTube Archive page starting at the thirty five minute mark.




One of Mr. Cunningham's requests for more public updates for Council came in January.

More items related to Tuesday's Council Session can be found from Council Timeline feature.

For a wider overview of Council Discussions see our archive page here.


Cross posted from the North Coast Review