City posts staff reports on the web

Bruce Walkinshaw - Penticton Western News Published: June 07, 2010 8:00 AM
The City of Penticton has taken steps to make the information and discussions behind city council's decisions significantly more available to the public. As of last Thursday city clerk Cathy Ingram is now posting all of council's regular meeting agendas, with links to each item's staff report, along with corresponding video of the meeting. After the meetings, the items in the agendas will also be tagged with approximate time that the item came up in the meeting so that residents interested in one issue do not have to watch the entire meeting (unlike the press). The page can be found at: www.penticton.ca/council/agendas/default.asp.

"We wanted to be more accessible for the public who don't have the ability to get in here to get copies of the reports but they want to know the background of how council makes their decisions and how staff make their recommendations," said Ingram, who set up the system. Ingram also said that often the information and staff analysis (providing the pros and cons of a decision council might make) is provided to council in their agenda reports which councillors read before they get to council. "The mayor has asked us to do is to give the readers digest version when presenting our staff reports to council because the have already read the reports," she explained. "But when we do that, some of the points that might be important to somebody in the public to understand the recommendations, debate or decisions that were made might be included in the agenda report but not (mentioned) in the discussions at the meeting. "Posting all the reports on the internet will give the public a lot more background into how their municipal government is making decisions. It goes with transparency and trying to get more public participation and more public understanding."

Ingram also said that she hopes that posting the agenda reports on the internet will help reduce the city's use of paper. "My vision is to eventually be able to wean council into using this on their laptops at the council chambers," she said. "Plus, if they are traveling they can pick up the agenda on their laptop and start looking at the reports and if they are going to miss the meeting, they can phone one of the other councillors and say, 'I do support this or I don't support this, here is the reasons why, can you please voice my opinions for me at the meeting.' "What we will do is run this by council as a dry run and to get some feedback from council and the public and see how user-friendly it really is."