{"id":7112,"date":"2009-10-11T21:39:22","date_gmt":"2009-10-12T01:39:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spacingtoronto.ca\/?p=7112"},"modified":"2010-10-08T16:42:04","modified_gmt":"2010-10-08T20:42:04","slug":"understanding-a-city-council-meeting-101","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2009\/10\/11\/understanding-a-city-council-meeting-101\/","title":{"rendered":"Understanding a city council meeting 101"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Yes, City Council proceedings are often funny, ridiculous, and entertaining<\/a>, and sometimes even embarrassing.\u00a0 Let’s get that out of the way.<\/p>\n

What they are not is a farce of democracy or a mockery of government, with councillors arbitrarily deferring items left and right rather than actually having the guts to deal with them.\u00a0 Okay, so that happens a little, but not nearly as much as the condescending cover story<\/a> in last Sunday’s Star<\/em> would have you believe.<\/p>\n

The pitch for the piece, by feature writer Kenneth Kidd, was probably reasonable enough: send someone who knows nothing about municipal politics to a meeting of City Council in order to see what actually takes place.\u00a0 That’s as good a premise for an article as any; the problem was Kidd’s approach to his subject matter, which could be summarized as “What a bunch of buffoons.”\u00a0 Rather than head in to Council Chambers with a genuine curiosity \u2014 as any good journalist or ethnographer should \u2014 he went in expecting the worst and found it:<\/p>\n

Inside a 16-page bundle of green-coloured paper sits the proposed agenda for Toronto City Council, and one of the first orders of business is to decide, well, what will actually remain on the agenda and what will be “held,” put off for another day.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There’s probably a good article to be written about Council’s peculiar and esoteric procedural rules [PDF<\/a>].\u00a0 That does not, however, excuse the fact that Kidd’s explanation of them is simply wrong.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

At the beginning of a City Council meeting, all items on the agenda are summarily and unanimously adopted, except for those on which a councillor places a hold.\u00a0 That is, if a councillor wants to debate or discuss an item, to ask questions of staff, to move an amendment, or even to have a recorded vote, he or she must ensure that the item is being held down by someone or another.\u00a0 (There are certain exceptions, but this is the general principle that applies much more often than not.)<\/p>\n

The trouble is that Kidd thinks that a “hold” is synonymous with a “deferral,” which is the correct term<\/a> for putting off an item to a subsequent meeting, and is not a decision that an individual councillor can make unilaterally.<\/p>\n

It goes on, page after page, with councillors rising to explain why this item should be put off, or that one now needs alteration or urgent attention.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The agenda items that Kidd witnessed being “put off” were actually the ones that were being marked as deserving of particular attention at that meeting<\/em>.\u00a0 This is a significant factual error, as it substantially undermines the entire introductory portion of the article, and casts doubt on the rest.<\/p>\n

Despite immediately being alerted to the mistake<\/a>, however, the Star<\/em> has not issued a correction<\/a>, either online or in any of its seven subsequent print editions.\u00a0 It is, after all, just a matter of City Council’s reputation; it’s not like the Star<\/em> had called the Rogers Centre the SkyDome<\/a> or anything.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yes, City Council proceedings are often funny, ridiculous, and entertaining, and sometimes even embarrassing.\u00a0 Let’s get that out of the way. What they are not is a farce of democracy or a mockery of government, with councillors arbitrarily deferring items left and right rather than actually having the guts to deal with them.\u00a0 Okay, soContinue reading “Understanding a city council meeting 101”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4078,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[756,5384,569,405],"class_list":["post-7112","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-city-council","tag-rogers-centre","tag-skydome","tag-the-star"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nUnderstanding a city council meeting 101 - Spacing Toronto<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2009\/10\/11\/understanding-a-city-council-meeting-101\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Understanding a city council meeting 101 - Spacing Toronto\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Yes, City Council proceedings are often funny, ridiculous, and entertaining, and sometimes even embarrassing.\u00a0 Let’s get that out of the way. 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