Huntsville’s General Committee is no more. The monthly gathering of councillors to discuss and debate a wide range of topics was implemented for the last term of council, but for its 2018-2022 term council will return to a standing committee structure. And two of those committees of council, along with one advisory committee, will include citizen members.
“The General Committee system is a good one but it’s tougher to get into much more detail because the meetings get too long once you’ve been talking for 2.5 or three hours,” Mayor Scott Aitchison told Doppler at a special council meeting on December 10. “I thought we’d try it this way and see how it goes. I think pretty much everyone on council agrees that it’s a good idea to try it. If we find some things are getting missed, we’ll look at it.”
Aitchison added that his intent with establishing a General Committee last term was to “bring people together a little bit more. I think there was a lot of anxiety in the building about what council was and wasn’t doing, and council itself wasn’t a completely united group, there was division within council. I felt pretty strongly that having a General Committee last term would be a good way to ensure nobody felt they were being left out and they weren’t engaging as much as the others.”
With what he called a respectful group that works well together, and “an awful lot more to talk about this term,” Aitchison feels that a standing committee structure is the way to go this time. “There’s going to be some challenges. We’ve got multi-million dollar price tags on an awful lot of the stuff that needs to happen and that’s going to require a little more discussion, a little more community engagement.”
One way that council will engage the community is with citizen members on some of its committees, namely Committee of Adjustment, which addresses minor zoning variances and land severances, and Community Services. The Accessibility Advisory Committee will once again have citizen members.
Committee of Adjustment
“Huntsville is one of the oddities in the province. It’s far more common across Ontario for citizens to be part of (standing committees) and so I thought it would be a good way to engage the community a little bit more in the way decisions are made around here,” said Aitchison.
Committee of Adjustment, he added, is unique “because of its quasi-judicial nature. I thought maybe one of the reasons that it is structured as a citizen committee in so many other places is to try to take the politics out of the decision-making process around land severance and minor variance.” Council has also delegated the ability to grant consents for those matters to the Committee of Adjustment. (Watch Doppler for more on that story.)
Three community members have already been appointed to Committee of Adjustment: former councillor Bob Stone, businessman Kenneth Donald, and Brandon Stapleton, sales representative with Coldwell Banker Thompson Real Estate.
Aitchison said that there wasn’t enough time to undergo an application process for the positions.
“We had to get them appointed because we’ve got a meeting coming up where we’ve got to make some decisions. Just because of the legislated timelines and making sure we don’t needlessly delay any development applications, we wanted to make sure that was in place,” said Aitchison, adding that they may open it up to applications for more people in future but that for now they will work with the existing slate of two councillors and three community members.
“I reached out to a few different people in the community and (former) councillor Stone was one of the first people I reached out to,” said Aitchison. “He runs a really good meeting and I asked him if he would be interested in chairing it because he has done that for the last four years, and he accepted so I was pleased. We’ve got to get someone trained in the intricacies of the planning process and it’s nice to be able to use his experience around the table for another four years.”
Kenneth Donald has been on the Town’s Economic Development Committee previously and is a well-known businessman in the community, noted Aitchison, while Brandon Stapleton “is a young guy just starting his career, and I thought it would be good to have a more youthful voice around that table.”
Citizen members of the Committee of Adjustment will sit for the entire term of council and are each paid a per diem of $150 per meeting. The chair, if a citizen member, receives an additional $50 per meeting. Council members on the Committee of Adjustment are appointed annually. Councillors Nancy Alcock and Jason FitzGerald will round out the Committee of Adjustment for its first year.
Community Services Committee
The Community Services Committee will also include citizen members. “We’ll broaden our reach to have people sit on that committee. We want to get people from the recreation sports world, we want to get someone from the arts community, maybe from the heritage community, I’d like to see a student on that committee as well, either from Huntsville High School or the adult learning centre,” said Aitchison. “We want to cast our net a little wider for that group. It will be open for application and council will appoint from there.”
Council members that have been appointed to the Community Services Committee are: Councillors Jonathan Wiebe (chair) and Dione Schumacher (vice-chair), Deputy Mayor Karin Terziano, and Councillors Brian Thompson and Tim Withey.
Other committees
The other standing committees, advisory committees and board liaisons for the 2018-2022 term of council are:
Corporate Services Committee
Chair: Deputy Mayor Karin Terziano
Vice-Chair: Councillor Tim Withey
Members: Mayor Scott Aitchison, Councillor Dione Schumacher, and Councillor Jonathan Wiebe
Development Services Committee (also serves as a Municipal Heritage Committee, a Licensing Committee for Taxi and Limousine Bylaw and a Licensing Committee for Business Licensing Bylaw)
Chair: Councillor Nancy Alcock
Vice Chair: Councillor Jason FitzGerald
Members: Mayor Scott Aitchison, Councillor Dan Armour, and Councillor Jonathan Wiebe
Operations and Protective Services Committee
Chair: Councillor Brian Thompson
Vice Chair: Councillor Dan Armour
Members: Councillor Nancy Alcock, Councillor Jason FitzGerald, and Councillor Tim Withey
Accessibility Advisory Committee
Chair: Councillor Dan Armour
Vice-Chair: Councillor Dione Schumacher
Citizen appointments by motion of council
Community board liaisons
Downtown Huntsville Business Improvement Area: Deputy Mayor Karin Terziano
Huntsville / Lake of Bays Chamber of Commerce: Councillor Jonathan Wiebe
Huntsville Public Library Board Members: Councillor Brian Thompson, citizen appointments by motion of council
Aspdin Community Hall Ad Hoc Committee Primary: Councillor Dione Schumacher
The bylaws outlining the committee structure and the appointment of the Committee of Adjustment were unanimously approved by council at its December 10 meeting.
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Fine: Let’s engage the community and then have the first 3 community members appointed; seemingly by the Mayor. Without prejudice, I have been involved with such committees when I resided in Ottawa. Surprisingly, no member of any committee was ever appointed because time was of the essence. Huntsville, we’re certainly on the rise in the municipal world, when our urgent government business exceeds Ottawa’s.