The following article appeared in the July 20 edition of the Guelph Tribune:
City council is changing the way councillors speak and vote at council meetings.
Instead of responding when their names are called for recorded votes and just raising their hands for other votes, council agreed Monday to start using an electronic voting system for all of its public meetings. All votes, aside from procedural motions, now will be recorded votes, and the way councillors vote on any issue will be part of the minutes posted on the city’s website.
Councillors will have a fixed amount of time to vote yes or no to a motion by pressing the appropriate button, and how each councillor votes will be displayed on an overhead screen.
The intent “is just to enhance transparency” at council meetings, said Coun. Gloria Kovach, chair of the city’s governance committee. She said the changes won’t start at the next council meeting, because the city’s procedural bylaw has to be changed first.
Another proposed change, which had been voted down by council’s governance committee, was resurrected and passed at Monday’s council meeting. It calls for councillors to sit instead of stand when speaking at council meetings, so they can be heard better through microphones that now are affixed to the table.
Kovach argued that the system of standing should be retained for the time being, partly because of poor sight lines between councillors around the current city hall horseshoe. And Coun. Ian Findlay called standing to speak a “historical tradition” that’s observed in Canada’s provincial and federal legislatures. However, the motion to have councillors remain seated while speaking was passed when Mayor Karen Farbridge broke a 5-5 tie by voting in favour.
Under the new system, the mayor or other meeting chair also won’t have to keep track of the order of speaking requests from councillors, while also chairing the meeting and following the debate. Now, members of council will press a button when they wish to speak, and the system will automatically list them in a queue in the order in which the request was made.