Civility in public deliberation suffered two blows in the City of North Vancouver last week. At Thursday's Open House to discuss the possible implementation of pay parking in the Lonsdale corridor, members of the public loudly and continually interrupted presenters. It was only after multiple appeals for calm were made that the discussion was able to progress, albeit only roughly.
Then on Monday night, in the space of about 30 minutes, the following occurred in the City's Council chambers:
- Mayor Mussatto brusquely interrupted Councillor Bookham's comments twice, saying that she was unfairly casting aspersions on staff or council. After the second interruption Councillor Bookham protested, but she was abruptly dismissed by the mayor, who refused to let her continue.
- Councillor Bookham stormed out of the meeting.
- Councillor Heywood then tried to raise a point of order to express his view that the Mayor had acted inappropriately. The mayor interrupted him and refused to let him continue.
- Councillor Fearnley then moved a motion to challenge the chair, which failed.
- Councillor Fearnley then tried to move that the meeting adjourn early. The motion was not seconded and it failed.
- Councillor Fearnley then excused himself from the meeting due to a perceived conflict of interest. Apparently he did not return even after discussion of the issue was completed, so that some items for the in-camera agenda were left unaddressed.
I was in the chambers during all this and was not impressed. The Council is not dysfunctional but it is going further down that path rather than away from it. It is difficult to argue that members of the public should conduct themselves professionally at public meetings when their elected representatives cannot do so.
- Mayor Mussatto should not have acted the way he did. His role as Chair is to civilly facilitate discussion and defer to the will of the Council.
- Councillor Bookham, although she was right to feel slighted, should not have left the council chambers. A councillor's job is to conduct the people's business, even if it unfortunately becomes uncomfortable.
- Similarly, Councillor Fearnley should not have moved to adjourn the meeting and should not have left early.
If this were a board of directors or a group of employees, I would suggest that they all go have a outside-of-chambers "bonding" session where they can at least develop the minimal relationship necessary to work civilly with each other.
All of the above is viewable
here, starting at the 3:00 mark. A North Shore Outlook piece on what happened is
here.
