Coun. Debbie Wiggins-Colwell seeks permission to speak
Last Tuesday’s 45-minute Tantramar council meeting ended on a dramatic note after Councillor Debbie Wiggins-Colwell raised her hand just as Mayor Andrew Black was calling for a motion to adjourn.
“I would just like to make an observation if I may on the first responders. May I continue?” she asked.
“It’s not on the agenda,” said CAO Jennifer Borne.
“It’s an observation that happened and I don’t think it can wait,” Wiggins-Colwell interjected adding that the matter was too urgent to be held over for the next meeting.
“Yeah, it’s not on the agenda, so that….” the mayor said.
“It’s important but…” Wiggins-Colwell interjected.
“It just happened,” she added, then paused, “It’s up to council.”
Town Clerk Donna Beal delivering her verdict
The mayor turned to Town Clerk Donna Beal who delivered a decisive no.
“Thank you Councillor Wiggins-Colwell, but to add something to the agenda, it would have had to be requested before the agenda was approved,” Beal said, adding that raising the matter earlier would also have required the unanimous consent of council before it could be added to the agenda.
“So, a motion to adjourn,” the mayor said ending the drama and the meeting.
Wiggins-Colwell told reporters later that she wanted to direct council and the public’s attention to the failure of the emergency dispatch system in Dorchester.
“We had a 911 call seconds from the first responders,” she said, “and after 10 minutes, they did not appear, they did not come.”
It took an ambulance more than half an hour to arrive, Wiggins-Colwell said.
“It was pretty scary, it was a pending heart attack.”
In Dorchester, the fire department normally responds to such calls, but, for some reason she said, they didn’t receive notification of the 911 call.
“There’s something wrong with the system, it’s not working the right way,” she said, adding that “we’ll get to the bottom of it between the CAO and the mayor and myself.”
Note: the Dorchester Fire Department was told last October that Ambulance New Brunswick would reinstate the practice of directing emergency calls to it since firefighters there are trained as medical first responders.
Tantramar’s incomplete agenda
The proceedings of council bylaw the province imposed when the new council took office on January 1, 2023 lists the following agenda item:
Mayor and Councillor statements and inquiries.
But that item has never been included on Tantramar Council’s actual agenda prepared and distributed by the clerk’s office.
On Friday, Warktimes had the following e-mail exchange with Mayor Black:
Mayor Black asks the clerk to weigh in on Wiggins-Colwell’s request to speak
Q: I’m wondering why Councillor Wiggins-Colwell was not allowed to speak at the close of Tuesday’s meeting? I know the clerk said the “observation” she was trying to make was not on the agenda. But the standard agenda in the proceedings of council bylaw does allow for (k) Mayor & Councillor Statements and Inquiries. So why no opportunity for her to raise a matter concerning public safety in Dorchester?
A: In order to adhere to parliamentary procedure an elected official would have to request in advance of the meeting to speak under statements of members of council. This would then be approved during agenda approval. If this is not done it is not on the agenda. We take matters of public safety seriously, and this can always be directed to the CAO to address until the elected official can speak publicly at the next meeting.
‘Ridiculous’
“I think this is ridiculous,” Mt. A. Politics Professor Geoff Martin writes in an e-mail to Warktimes.
Martin, who specializes in the study of municipal politics and who served for six years as a councillor in Sackville, listed a series of points phrased as questions:
- The standard agenda (for this item) is only followed if someone says in advance they want to speak?
- What if they want to speak about something that happened during the meeting?
- Also, why should their desire to speak be subject to the unanimous approval of council?
“They should design the system to encourage councillor participation, not to prevent it,” Martin writes.
“There is a shocking impulse to control people, yet voters hate it when elected officials are led around by the nose by staff like the clerk and the CAO.”
“It’s idiotic not to allow councillors to speak freely,” says Virgil Hammock, a retired Mt. A. fine arts professor who served 13 years on Sackville town council.
“The mayor should have asked the councillor what was on her mind instead of shutting her down,” he adds.
“Who is running the council anyway?”
In Moncton, a different story
Professor Martin writes that few councils are this restrictive and that he’s pretty sure the one in Moncton allows members to make statements without having to put them on the formal agenda.
When Warktimes watched the recording of the May 6, 2024 Moncton regular council meeting, the agenda was adopted without any councillors seeking approval to make a statement.
Then, when Mayor Dawn Arnold came to #8 on the formal agenda, “Statements by members of council,” Ward 3 Councillor Bryan Butler spoke for a minute and a half, congratulating Harrison Trimble High School for being the only school in Canada to receive a designation as a personal learning community from an international organization.
In an e-mail yesterday, Councillor Butler said that while he’s not sure about the procedure for all councils, Moncton has a regular agenda item on councillors’ statements and councillors do not have to get their statements added to the agenda before being permitted to speak.
Do they not have a category for “New Business” on the agenda that had not been scheduled? Most meetings I ever attended had discussions for “old business” and “New business”.
Comment from Bruce Wark:
They’re going by an agenda that is part of the provincial bylaw that they inherited and that they haven’t got around to changing. Here is the order of business prescribed in that bylaw:
Call to Order
Adoption of Agenda
Conflict of Interest Declarations
Adoption of Minutes
Consent Agenda
Public and Administrative Presentations
Reports and Recommendations from Committees & Private meetings
Reports from Administration
Bylaws
Closed Session
Mayor & Councillor Statements & Inquiries
Notices of Motion and Resolutions
Adjournment
Good job Bruce. Well reported. Thank you for covering this because I watched Youtube live and was very concerned about them so rudely not letting Debbie speak.. so much so that I made a phone call to her to discuss the situation because I wanted to hear from her about her concerns but she was away in Halifax. Its correct to say that its all very ridiculous and wrong – it is a bad look for the town’s reputation to so happily shut up an elected official… but I also find the entire opening of these town council meetings to be silly with the statement Donna Beal has obviously prepared and shoves in front of Andrew Black reminding him to read each time about ‘unceded territory’. Donna Beal seems to be acting as an authoritarian to a submissive Andrew Black.. watching them censor people so cheerfully is creepy… and yes, town hall seem to be targetting Debbie [she must be feeling very uncomfortable in her seat]… we don’t vote for the town hall staffers and boy do they know it. I think we need to see some people laid off from the Town’s payroll… they’re far too big for their boots. The witch hunting of Debbie really needs to be halted.
There ya go.
The CAO put her foot down, again.
She ain’t fooling around.
This councillor’s lack of past cooperation and conflict with the CAO
and council, is now paying dividends.
.
Follow the rules and get along with thy neighbour.
Jesus, even I learneded that.
I guess it’s now clear who really runs this town.
I wonder how Wiggins-Colwell voted when Council set out to persecute Bruce Phinney? Inquiring minds want to know, but are too lazy to look it up themselves.
Comment from Bruce Wark: This link will shed light on the alignment of the two councillors you mention: https://warktimes.com/2023/10/11/tantramar-council-votes-against-releasing-secret-fire-department-report/
In respect to Tantramar councillor denied chance to speak about public safety issue in Dorchester. So council’s only employee CAO Jennifer Borne said, “It’s not on the agenda” Fine! Unless there is a by law that states the CAO may interrupt even if the observation is out of order, the CAO cannot unless the Mayor requests an opinion of clarification. The Mayor should know that. At this point there is no point of order called by any councillor on whether or not this was new business or as purported a parting observation.
So the Strong Mayor called for a motion. What was the result?
The idea that this is parliamentary procedure is absurd. Tantramar has been mismanaged since January 1, 2023. Incompetence, bad management or both. The health and safety of the community is a priority. This with not making sure that recommendations supposedly in a new Fire By- law are actually implemented and compliance ensured.
The Mayor even a bad one makes that call on any recommendation even one council cannot see. This is the Chief criticism of over-centralized governance. Council needs to define better what would be considered unacceptable in terms of ethics and prudence.( an executive by-law of Limitations for CAO. A core toll for evaluation
Good governance (Yet to be defined) is tightly linked to the fight against negligence.
According to the (Rothstein and Teorell, 2008;UN.2009) fullfills accouintability.
For what its worth thirty years of being a no-name politican I woukd identify these core principles of Westminster Parliarmentary procedure.
1. participatory;
2. consistent with rule of law
3. TRANSPARENT
4. responsive
5. deliberative-oriented
6. protecting the minority by ensuring that those who don’t live in the core are taken into account.
7. effective and efficient
8. Accountable
Conclusion for now. As a councillor I knew I should not be making day to day decisions for staff, but I did understand to make laws that a partnership with staff (FIREMEN) must make information available, and there must be people (committees) with reason to use this information. Key among them is the independent judiciary (Not code of Conduct) and a free responsible press. Of course how decisions are made and who?
You cannot keep using citizens and their money to be “crash test” dummies for social engineering . Costly but does not require a grade eight education. Fill the pot holes, extend the sewerage lines that have been neglected. And stop driving us crazy with the 1000 year plan Hitler, 10 year NB Education, 5 year plan Tantramar.
Cut adding staff ,”just get her done”.
The witch-hunt of DWC continues along with snafu after snafu on the administration’s part. One cannot help but question the administration’s competence. There’s example after example of misinterpreting their own by-laws (Sunday Shopping, Deputy Mayor election @ the first Council meeting of Tantramar, disposal of town property, rfq process etc). It is great to see we have political science experts weighing in on how things can be improved. Glad people are taking notice.