{"id":28127,"date":"2020-11-27T13:14:34","date_gmt":"2020-11-27T18:14:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=28127"},"modified":"2020-11-27T13:14:42","modified_gmt":"2020-11-27T18:14:42","slug":"recording-closed-session-meetings-a-long-time-coming-says-council","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/recording-closed-session-meetings-a-long-time-coming-says-council\/","title":{"rendered":"Recording Closed Session meetings \u201ca long time coming,\u201d says Council"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Recording Closed Session meetings of Council has been \u201ca long time coming,\u201d according to Mayor Tom Mrakas, but one Councillor has expressed misgivings about keeping these recordings in perpetuity citing \u201ccancel culture.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Council this week is set to approve the audio recording of closed-door meetings after staff recommendations received the green light at last Tuesday\u2019s General Committee meeting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Should the recommendations be approved this week, audio recordings will kick in for the first Closed Session meeting of 2021 and access to these recordings will be restricted to the Town Clerk, Chief Administrative Officer, Town Solicitor, and, if necessary, the Town\u2019s Closed Session meeting investigator.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cStaff will ensure the recordings are kept in a safe place where only the Town Clerk has access,\u201d said Town Clerk Mike de Rond in a report to Council. \u201cThe Town Solicitor and Chief Administrative Officer will be granted access when requested. Access to the audio recordings will not be provided to individual members of Council or through the Freedom of Information (FOI) process. Should a closed session investigation request be received, the relevant audio recording(s) may be accessed by the closed meeting investigator if they determine they would be helpful to the investigation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAs Aurora is one of the few municipalities to record closed session meetings, there is not a road map when it comes to the retention of the files. The industry standard for the retention of recordings of any type of Council meeting is permanent, and staff is proposing this also be applied to closed session audio recordings. This does not pose either short-term or long-term storage capacity for staff. Further to this, there is no limitation period for closed session meeting investigations. While it is reasonable to assume that the likelihood of a closed session investigation decreases over time, there are plausible scenarios where a request is submitted for a meeting at least 5 \u2013 10 years ago.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The possibility of audio recordings being kept on hand in perpetuity, however, raised concerns from Councillor Rachel Gilliland, who cited \u201ccancel culture\u201d as a reason for her objection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI feel there really isn\u2019t that much of an example of many municipalities that keep it in perpetuity and I don\u2019t see a reason why we can\u2019t amend that to something to the effect of six or seven years, the recommendation [on] how long to keep your taxes,\u201d she said. \u201cI think the risk of keeping things a lot longer than that, you can really set yourself up for a situation of\u2026 \u2018cancel culture.\u2019 I wouldn\u2019t want to be in a closed session situation where you\u2019re speaking freely about something and the context maybe 20 or 30 years from now, maybe that context does not translate in the exact same way. We see that does happen now with things that happened 20 or 30 years ago and we have learned from the way we evolve that maybe that context wasn\u2019t the best way [to communicate].\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Going forward, she said, \u201cI wouldn\u2019t want to take away the merit of closed session\u201d where Council members can freely discuss issues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI wouldn\u2019t want anyone to hold back,\u201d she said. \u201cI am not suggesting anything for the purposes of hiding anything\u2026it is specifically on the cancel culture. If, in 10 years, nothing has been done, I don\u2019t see any reason why we need to be holding onto these.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Councillor Michael Thompson, who initially brought forward the latest motion to record Closed Session meetings, had a different perspective.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Regular Council and Committee meetings, he said, are recorded, is posted on YouTube for all to see, and is there in perpetuity. This would be no different, he argued.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI am comfortable in how I govern myself in Closed Session and in Open Session,\u201d said Councillor Thompson. \u201cI have no concerns that it is in perpetuity. That is the nature of the role that we are [public figures] and what we say will always be out there in perpetuity. Personally, I have no qualms five years from now\u2026 a closed session recording of myself, for whatever reason, came out there, I am comfortable with how I conduct myself. I am fine with it being in perpetuity. It seems to be that most of our staff, the recommendation is for in perpetuity and we\u2019re just being consistent that way.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In response, Councillor Gilliland said she appreciated the comments and that she too was \u201cvery confident\u2026in the way I conduct myself and the things I say,\u201d but maintained keeping the recordings in perpetuity was unnecessary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf they really need to dig and dive deep, somewhere after 10 or 15 years, it must be a real problem,\u201d she continued. \u201cI am going to throw out cancel culture. I don\u2019t feel it is totally necessary. You can vote how you wish. Again, I am confident how I conduct [myself], I am not afraid to speak my mind and I certainly know I speak with integrity, but I don\u2019t think anybody speaks out of context on purpose. We have seen these things happen, dig up from 30 years ago, and all of a sudden it is a completely different mindset. It is a new modern term, this cancel culture, and I don\u2019t know what that is going to bring moving forward. The spirit of this, I absolutely agree with it, but I would just like to vote on [that] separately from this and move on from there.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the end, Council tentatively approved the recordings unanimously \u2013 with Councillor Gilliland the lone Councillor voting against the specific proviso of the recordings being \u201cpermanent.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis is a long time coming,\u201d said Mayor Tom Mrakas just before the vote. \u201cI am thankful that this is here in front of us and we\u2019re going to be hopefully moving forward with this. I am very supportive of this, I was supportive of this the first time that we saw it, and I am supportive of it again. As was mentioned, what I say behind the doors is exactly what I would say sitting in front of the camera and I think we all need to remember that closed session is not to protect the individual, it is to protect the corporation.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Brock Weir<\/strong>
Editor
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter<\/em><\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Recording Closed Session meetings of Council has been \u201ca long time coming,\u201d according to Mayor Tom Mrakas, but one Councillor has expressed misgivings about keeping these recordings in perpetuity citing \u201ccancel culture.\u201d Council this week is set to approve the audio recording of closed-door meetings after staff recommendations received the green light at last Tuesday\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28127","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-7jF","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-23 20:58:58","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28127","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28127"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28127\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28127"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28127"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28127"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}