On Sept 23, 2024, Saanich Couns. Brownoff, Plant, Brice, De Vries, Harper, and Mayor Murdock voted for the elimination of open forum.
The dubious reasoning provided in the report that night for the elimination of open forum was to create B次元官网网址渁dditional opportunities for meaningful public engagement in the form of town hall meetings which in turn will eliminate open forum as a business item from committee of the whole meeting agendas.B次元官网网址�
This was nothing but a classic non sequitur. It does not follow that one would lead to the other. Eliminating open forum was not a prerequisite for creating town halls. Even at the time, it was apparent to many that the elimination of the monthly open forum for tri-annual town hall meetings was not creating B次元官网网址渁dditional opportunities for meaningful public engagement,B次元官网网址� as the report claimed.
If there were any doubts remaining at the time B次元官网网址� now with hindsight, it was downright misleading.
Since then, there has been only one town hall meeting, taking place on Oct. 22, 2024. The B次元官网网址榤eaningful engagementB次元官网网址� was intentionally unrecorded, thus essentially useless for governance purposes. Surreally, at present there is a 29-second video of a blank wall with no audio posted for it on SaanichB次元官网网址檚 agendaB次元官网网址檚 page. The meagre minutes produced from the town hall meeting are similarly farcical, with only two pages that barely touch on the issues voiced by the public, and are seemingly designed to filter the content, rather than to accurately portray it. None of the elected officialsB次元官网网址� responses to questions are retained in them.
There was supposed to be a second town hall meeting in February, which never happened, and I was informed by Legislative Services that one is likely to take place in May, which would be half a year after the previous town hall.
So far, open public engagement has been reduced from monthly recorded open forums, to what will likely have been once in half a year, a single unrecorded town hall. That isnB次元官网网址檛 B次元官网网址渁dditional opportunities for meaningful public engagementB次元官网网址�. That would be a subtraction of opportunities for open public engagement by six times, and now unrecorded. So much for open democracy.
Sasha Izard
Saanich
