 | Saturday, November 13, 2021
Reading this online? Sign up to get this delivered to your inbox every Friday. | | How much is Vancouver an outlier when it comes to council business? You may be surprised | | |  | | | Most daytime workplaces probably don’t involve multiple people complaining with the boss about scheduling issues at 12:04 in the morning.
But Vancouver city council isn’t like most workplaces.
“There’s no recourse at this point,” said Mayor Kennedy Stewart, explaining to councillors why, after three days of hearing from the public on a proposed change to rezoning rules for rental apartments, the matter wouldn’t be discussed again for another month, and council couldn’t change the timing.
“You don’t need a motion to recess, we’re all done.”
It was another marathon Vancouver council meeting with nothing decided, another Vancouver council meeting with key business put off to another week.
Just how unique is that state of affairs? CBC News tracked the length of every public meeting held by every municipality in Metro Vancouver so far in 2021, and searched for how many meetings went longer than four hours.
It’s a somewhat arbitrary figure, but rare is any meeting that improves in quality after the four-hour mark. And it’s a useful proxy for measuring the ability of city council to conduct business efficiently.
Most municipalities have had three or less marathon meetings this year — with a few smaller places like Langley City or Bowen Island at zero. A few city halls have about one marathon meeting a month when they’re in session, and unsurprisingly they’re mostly the municipalities associated with split councils and tense arguments (West Vancouver, Surrey, Port Moody).
The municipality with the second highest number of meetings taking more than four hours this year is the Township of Langley, with nine.
Vancouver: 42 marathon meetings.
That’s almost as many as the 20 other municipalities in the region put together. And it’s not something that used to happen in Vancouver — city data shows the total amount of time in council is up by more than 50 per cent compared to the middle of last decade. What accounts for this? A few reasons: Vancouver has a split council that often gets bogged down in points of procedure, amendments and legal questions. Many municipalities have one dedicated section in each meeting for public input, while Vancouver allows every motion and every staff report to have opportunities for comment. The minority council incentivizes people to speak at city hall more than if one party dominated affairs. And, of course, it is the biggest city in the region.
One can argue whether this is effective participatory democracy or paralysis. One can’t argue that Vancouver is a massive outlier in the region in how council conducts its business.
And there’s no sign of it stopping. After all, as Stewart told councillors, there was a simple reason the continuation of the most recent marathon meeting couldn’t restart for another month.
“There’s no room,” he said to councillors.
You see, the next month is already fully booked with more meetings. | | |  | | | 1. Vancouver | | | It was a pretty slow week in councils across the province, owing to Remembrance Day, which is why Metro Matters spent significant time reporting on a Vancouver park board-city council dispute that happened 40 years ago. But there are a number of interesting motions on next week’s agenda, including a policy on vacancy control for SRO units.
Read more | | |  | | | 2. Vaccines | Elsewhere across the province, the one bit of common legislation these days is around vaccine mandates, with Surrey, Langley and Quesnel among those this week to put one in place for city employees and contractors. Why city councils are taking action here — while school boards are not — is a story too complex for this tiny box of text.
Read more in Peach Arch News | | | |  | | | 3. Social media | Debates over the toxicity of social media is nothing new, but municipalities trying to do something about it is somewhat novel. Fernie has joined Tofino in limiting comments on its Facebook page, with mayor Ange Qualizza tweeting “it’s the every day heroes that make our communities shine, and having a ‘thick skin’ should not be a requirement to do this job.” Read more in the Free Press | | | | | | Share this newsletter | | or subscribe if this was
forwarded to you. | | | | Check out the latest headlines at cbc.ca/bc and follow our municipal affairs reporter Justin McElroy on Twitter. And if you have any questions you might want answered in a future mailbag, drop Justin a line at metromatters@cbc.ca. | | | |
