Council Meetings

Council Meeting Procedures During COVID-19

Council and Committee meetings are taking place in Council Chambers. Members of the public are welcome to attend in person or view the live streamed meetings via YouTube.

Members of the public are encouraged to view the live streamed meetings via the Village’s YouTube channel and recorded archive available under Council Meeting Agendas the day after the meeting.

NOTE: The Village Hall/Council Chambers is now open to the public. Members of the public are required to follow public health orders to wear a mask in public indoor spaces.

• The Ministry of Municipal Affairs has advised that its preference is for local governments to take steps to enable people to come in person to the meeting – which we are doing.
• We will continue to livestream the meeting via webcam for people to watch online; however, it will not be possible for viewers to ask questions or submit comments as the meeting is not on Zoom so we do not have the required staff and technical capacity for this type of online interaction.
• Questions/comments must be sent to the email address indicated on the agenda by 4 p.m. on the day of the Council or Committee meeting.

Questions About Restrictions & Zoom Meetings – January 2022

With the recent COVID-19 restrictions due to the Omicron variant, we have been asked about whether we will be resuming holding Council Meetings on Zoom. At this point, we have not received any new direction from the provincial government, which means the guidance is still to hold the meetings in person; however, we have gone back to 50% capacity limits. We have also reached out to the Ministry of Municipal Affairs to flag our concerns about the new requirements for holding Zoom meetings.

Here’s why:

In September 2021, the provincial government changed the legislative requirements for hosting electronic meetings. Under the updated legislation, there are two new key requirements:

1.  Local governments must change their procedure bylaw to allow electronic meetings. The Village has now updated its procedures to allow electronic meetings in an emergency.
2. When holding an electronic meeting, a local government must also provide a place to come and view the meeting for those who do not have access to technology. This viewing location must be supervised by a municipal Officer. This is a significant challenge for the Village as, unlike larger municipalities, we only have two Officers: the Chief Administrative Officer and the Corporate Officer, and they are both needed to run the Council Meeting.

We are also limited by the technology in our existing Council Chambers. Although the technology software and hardware does exist and could be purchased by the Village with approval, additional staff would also be needed, both to provide technology support and so that an Officer can supervise the viewing location.

Dealing with the constant changes to restrictions and requirements for COVID-19 continues to be extremely challenging for the Village, particularly as we are a small organization. We are doing our best to make sure we meet all provincial requirements, provide a means for our residents to view and participate in Council meetings and still keep everyone safe under very difficult circumstances. We all hope that in 2022 we will soon see an end to the restrictions and changing requirements.

We will continue to post updates here and on Facebook if there are any new changes or requirements due to COVID-19 that affect Council Meetings.