School board axes public submission meetings
Posted Dec 19, 2009 08:41:43 AM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
It sounds dubious on the surface.
Our local school board has done away with the public submission days in its schedule. The Halifax Regional School Board voted in favour this week of scrapping its public submission meetings, which have been slated each month on a Wednesday.
District 4 member Chris Poole showed no support for the decision.
“I understand their email, there’re phone calls, there’re submission forms online, but I still think the people who elected us need the ability to present to us, to talk to us at any opportunity they can,” Poole said during the board’s regular Wednesday meeting this week.
He raises the issue that the meetings have not been used since the current board’s inception and therefore there’s no reason to eliminate them. However, the same argument was used by the board’s corporate secretary.
“This is not a motion to do away with public input to the school board, at all. This is a motion to take out of the bylaws a meeting, which quite literally, you haven’t used since I started in August,” said Jim Gunn.
District 3 member Gin Yee added the motion would free up another Wednesday for doing board work.
The public submission meeting night was brought in by one-man board member Howard Windsor as a way for him to communicate with more people. But as several of the councillors mentioned, they are accessible by phone and email.
Anyone wanting to make a public submission to the board can now do so at the regular board meetings.
