Motions passed recently by Athabasca town council and Boyle village council, calling for all future joint council meetings regarding regional governance to be held publicly, shows they’ve both learned from past mistakes.
Various councillors’ penchant for closed-door meetings was a key reason why attempts at enhanced regional governance — amalgamation, in layman’s terms — were stonewalled in 2004. From the outset, the public perceived amalgamation as a backroom deal being thrust upon the public, and when the councils of the day finally began public consultations, they were forced to spend more time defending the process than promoting the virtues of regional governance.
If talk of amalgamation heats up again (and the fact that it repeatedly appears as a joint council agenda item indicates that it will), at least the town and village won’t make that mistake again. The motions passed recently essentially mean that their cards would be on the table, face up, for all to see, right from the very start.
Athabasca County council has not indicated that they’ll be passing a similar motion, but that’s a moot point now; you can’t really discuss regional governance when you’re the only one at the table.
But beyond the immediate issue of regional governance/amalgamation, the motions passed recently — and more particularly the debate that surrounded them — shows that councillors are finally starting to address the long-neglected issue of transparency when in comes to inter-governmental dealings.
For many years now, councillors from all three municipalities have met regularly for closed-door joint council meetings, where they discuss issues of shared concern. They justify the privacy of those meetings by insisting that they are informal, with no motions passed; and that keeping them closed allows for frank and open discussion that the presence of the public and media might inhibit.
From time to time, various voices from both within and outside the respective councils have called for these meetings to be made public, but never with enough volume to sway the consensus.
The recent motions may change that. If amalgamation is too touchy a subject to be caught discussing privately, maybe other topics of shared interest need to be placed in the light of public and media scrutiny.
Maybe, at long last, it’s time to fling the doors to joint council meetings wide open.
The irony, of course, is that if regional governance talks take hold and amalgamation comes to fruition, there’d be no joint council meetings at all.
But that remains to be seen. For now, ensuring transparency in talks about regional governance is a positive first step.
