By Stephen Vance, Editor
Unlike my friend at Meaford’s other paper, I have rarely been bothered about, and have never written about the meals provided for council and municipal staff during council meetings, primarily because embarking on such a topic typically devolves into “council is wasting our money” even though the cost is literally peanuts, and really should not be an issue.
I don’t begrudge members of council and senior staff having a meal break during extended council meetings. Sometimes the meetings can last several hours, and at times they are longer than expected. Everyone needs to eat, and I personally don’t feel that municipal staff in particular, who have already worked a full day at the office, should have to pay for a dinner during a six-hour meeting after their regular work day.
That said, while I seemingly have a longer fuse than other reporters with regard to this issue, council and staff should show some respect to the media and residents when it comes to the timing of meetings, and the provision of food.
This week’s meeting of council was destined to be a lengthy affair, and that was obvious the moment I scanned the agenda.
The meeting was scheduled to start at 4 pm with a special education session for members of council. Thus far in their term Meaford’s council has been treated to, or perhaps forced to endure, nearly 30 special education sessions. The education sessions are important to members of council, particularly those elected for the first time in October. The education sessions are also important for journalists, in my opinion, not because we might write about the actual education sessions, but because it is a perfect setting to assess the strengths and weaknesses of individual councillors and of council on the whole. It is also a good opportunity to see what kinds of questions councillors ask, which can help to determine the priorities (or lack thereof) of council.
If an education session is to start at 4 pm, however, and the regular council meeting, which was to include two major, important, and lengthy presentations as well as the municipal staff quarterly report, which always takes an agonizingly lengthy amount of time, then there shouldn’t be more than an hour of downtime between the conclusion of the education session and the start of the actual meeting.
The education session on April 27 began at 4 pm, and ended at 5:22 pm. So what to do for the hour and eight minutes before the rest of the meeting could begin? Why have a nice meal brought in for members of council and staff of course. And just to be safe, better include a nice glazed bundt cake for dessert to ensure that council and staff aren’t starving, after having been in the building for little more than the length of an average feature film.
I will say again, the minimal cost is in my opinion mostly irrelevant, and feeding staff when they are working an extra long day, seems like the most appropriate thing to do – but don’t waste the time of others.
When I know a meeting is going to last several hours, and if those hours extend into a standard meal time, I plan ahead. Sometimes I eat a late lunch or early dinner, other times I take some food with me to council. Why can’t members of council do the same?
It might sound trivial, it might sound like nit-picking, but as I said previously, the meal delivered to council, whether it is Subway sandwiches, or pizza, or rice and beans, or steak and shrimp (well, that would be excessive) isn’t the issue.
Could council and staff not have scheduled their feast to begin at 4 pm, and the education session to begin at 5 pm, thereby eliminating the whole hour that others like the media and engaged residents had to sit around waiting? Why not have your meal before anyone else gets there?
My wasted time is my own concern, but here’s another concern. When a bunch of councillors sit in a room outside of the council chamber together and break bread, do they have a quorum? Yes they do, if there’s at least four of them. Not only that, but the reporters waiting around for councillors’ tummies to be full can hear the discussions of council members a room away. Is municipal business discussed outside of the public eye? See, that’s one of the major problems of such an extended break – what is that old saying? Idle hands are the devil’s tools after all. It is possible for a group of councillors to gather for a meal without discussing municipal business, but in politics, optics are everything.
