There are a number of Advisory Committees that report to a designated Standing Committee. For example, the Advisory Committees reporting to the Community Services and Parks Standing Committee are:
These committees do much important work. One of the reasons why I really appreciate my city councillor, Chris Holt, is that he regularly highlights the work of these groups and encourages residents to engage with them.
While the City of Windsor’s Open Data Portal has a spreadsheet of the contact information for the elected officials of the city, the membership of all of the advisory boards, agencies, committees and commissions are spread around the City of Windsor website. So I tried to bring the information together in a table.
Please note: my table is not complete. I don’t know who the reps are for the 9 BIAs in the city and I’m still looking for the membership lists of the following:
My goal of this graph was not to visually demonstrate board interlocks but to better represent the scope and the size of all the representatives of our city government.
And I also was curious about the gender make up of this collective.
At the moment, my table lists 43 organizations, which looks likes this:
There are 158 people who are members of these organizations. 101 are male. 57 are female. That’s 36%.
The politics of the City of Windsor is in a dismal state. In Windsor, it is not good enough for the status quo to keeping on winning. Those who voice criticism or exercise their legal right to challenge decisions must be silenced so that the city can speak in a united voice.
Those who suggest that it is essential that we need to speak with only one voice are not those opting to take a vow of silence. They are those already speaking and don’t want anyone else to interrupt. We should be deeply concerned that the mayor and some of our city counselors repeatedly choose to try to gag the voices of residents elected to speak to and work for our interests.
(Council’s interpretation of the Code of Conduct is being challenged through the process of Judicial Review. It is absolutely normal and necessary that the law allow for decisions to be challenged. That is how our legal system works.)
This year, the Mayor held a press conference and made the false remark that Windsor BIAs cannot use their funds “to fund a third-party appeal of a city decision” for their own interests. When the BIAs being targeted sought legal counsel they found precedent from other BIAs in the province that proved the Mayor wrong. Eventually the matter was resolved informally.
While it may not be possible that this sort of restriction on language can be adopted as the City of Toronto has powers, outlined in the Toronto Act, that are greater than the other 443 municipalities of the province, whose governance is described in the Municipal Act, it is still shameful that Kusmierczyk is pursuing legal language to curtail the activities of concerned business owners and operators in the City of Windsor. It also feels strangely out of character that he is seeking to eliminate the speech of entrepreneurs while simultaneously being employed as Director of Partnerships at WETech Alliance whose purpose is to develop new and existing businesses in the Windsor Essex region.
Why is the mayor’s office setting up a separate system to invest in various areas of the city to create themed districts when BIAs already exist to do this work? Don’t the people who work and invest in these neighbourhoods have a better understanding of what their needs are? I can think of no better reason why the mayor’s office involvement in theming neighbourhoods should be minimized than the fact that the mayor wants to add ‘Asian’ flair (presumably pagodas and dragon gates) to the other end of Wyandotte Street and call it Asia Town. As someone of Asian flair, I find this proposal ahistoric, cartoonish, and othering.
The mayor and some of our city councilors would rather silence the hundreds of entrepreneurs and business people who volunteer their time and contribute their hard earned money to make Windsor a more attractive place to shop, work, and live, rather than allow BIAs to act independently of the city, as they were intended to by law. They would rather curb all future speech of BIAs because they take issue with the BIAs in the present, who are supporting legal action that is in the interest of their membership.
But then I decided I didn’t want to cloud my positive review of Dave’s work with my take on what I see as the negative political scene in Windsor.
Teardown is not a tightly executed manifesto that diagnoses a particular social ill and then prescribes a strict regime for its cure. Politics is messy and to a certain extent, so is Teardown. Each chapter of Teardown takes on a different perspective of politics in Canada today. Sometimes a chapter resembles a case study, as when Meslin recounts his experiences fighting illegal billboards in the City of Toronto. Sometimes a chapter more closely resembles a lecture in political science, as when Dave explains the different models of voting reforms we could pursue in order to move past the first past the post system. Sometimes Meslin recommends getting involved in political parties. Sometimes Meslin suggests that the current structure of the political party is irremediable. This diversity of tactics and perspectives is not a failing of the book. It is an expression of the variety of the work and the experiences, both in politics and in active citizenship that Dave has shared with us.
I recommend the book and as I am confident that readers will find something that strongly resonates with them (for myself, that was Meslin’s critique of how Canadian political parties organize their get out the vote campaigns). We all know our political system is in a deeply and maddeningly troubled state but we don’t all understand the reasons why as well as Dave Meslin. I also recommend this book because I strongly believe in what I think is Dave Meslin’s overall message: we need to find more ways to share more power with more people. The winner take all mentality of our current state of politics is at the heart of most people’s dissatisfaction and our current dismal state of citizen participation.
The city of Windsor is a case study of a dismal state of politics. We have a political leadership that has no interest is sharing decision making with anyone else. In Windsor, it is not good enough for the status quo to keeping winning. All those who voice criticism or exercise their legal right to challenge decisions are silenced so that the city can speak with one voice.
I don’t watch the basketball but I am so happy to see so many Raptor fans so happy that they are in the NBA Finals. I was born in Toronto. Raptors fans look like Toronto. I am so delighted that Young Canada is embracing basketball. (When it comes to hockey, I’m that girl in The Tragically Hip’s Fireworks).
And yet, this past Monday, Windsor City Council declined to support a public viewing of the NBA Finals game, other than waiving the rental fee for Charles Clark Square.
The City of Windsor has, over the last 10 years, given the Detroit Grand Prix over $500,000. In 20015, the City of Windsor approved a Sports Commissioner with a salary of $120,000 a year plus $200,000 for bidding fees for a three year contract. The City of Windsor dedicated $3 million dollars to host the 2016 FINA swimming championship. That tally included $9,500 for the costume of the FINA mascot.
And yet Windsor City Council couldn’t find $10,000 to help provide the staffing and policing to ensure that Raptors fans would be both safe and happy as they gathered together downtown to watch them play.
This is post isn’t really about basketball. It’s a lament. It is so entirely disappointing when politics is played like a game that must have a winner and a loser.
Why didn’t the City of Windsor Administration not get behind a bid to host a public viewing of the Raptors in the finals? All signs suggest is that they did not want to give the Windsor BIA a “win.”
Some days earlier, the mayor of Windsor threatened various local BIAs to withhold their funding because they had spent funds on advocacy that the City administration takes issue with. But just before the City Council meeting that would have brought this issue to a vote, both parties sat down together and the City and the BIAs in question, found a compromise.
The work of finding a way forward when two or more parties disagree isgood politics. Sitting down together and talking to each at the same table and not issuing public threats through the mediais good politics. Supporting other organizations that are able to act on opportunities for the benefit of all is good politics.
Not letting someone else win because you perceive it as a loss? That’s being a spoilsport. And then we all lose.
I have not yet told you, dear reader, why I decided to create this blog you are currently reading. There is a reason and that reason isn’t particularly obvious and so I feel it would be good for me to let you know what is the purpose of all of this effort.
I will go to another place, nowhere special just another town You should come to the other place, make it special and make no loss Make it special and make no loss Cover the cost, cover the cost, Cover the cost, cover the cost, cover the cost, cover the cost Cover the cost, cover the cost, cover the cost, cover the cost These extra expenses make brilliant senses All you have to do is take your chances Cover the cost, cover the cost, cover the cost, cover the cost These extra expenses make brilliant senses Extra extra These are the things that make it better Are you ready for the city? is the city ready for you? Don’t you know you have to choose? the city is here for you to use Are you ready for the city? is the city ready for you? Don’t you know you have to choose? the city is here for you to use Are you ready for the city? is the city ready for you? Don’t you know you have to choose? the city is here for you to use
I love the phrase the city is here for you to use because when I read it I think of a generous city that – no matter who you are or how much money you have – you can enjoy public parks with water fountains, public bathrooms, public concerts, wild spaces and trails, safe schools, playgrounds, and park benches. When I think of the phrase, I think of cities like Montreal, Portland, and Copenhagen.
I think the city of Windsor can be a more generous place. We, as residents, can and should decide to give a little more individually, so that we can invest in our shared city which will provide benefits to all. I think we must do this because of global warming. But while I encourage everyone to turn and face the grim problem of climate change, I want to encourage everyone to resist the temptation to bunker down and become a prepper. Instead, I share the position of consultant Charles Montgomery, author of the book Happy City:
The message is as surprising as it is hopeful: by retrofitting our cities for happiness, we can tackle the urgent challenges of our age. The happy city, the green city and the low-carbon city are the same place, and we can all help build it.
That is what the name of this blog is trying to evoke. But it isn’t it’s raison d’être.
I created this blog to help foster a more generous city through civic action between elections.
Voting is not enough. Residents must know that there are ways they can actively participate in the betterment of their neighbourhoods, their downtown, and their city as a whole – beyond casting a single ballot every four years.
I believe that for much of the population of Windsor, voting does not feel that it lends itself directly to improvements that they can feel and appreciate. The turnout rate for last year’s municipal election for the city of Windsor was 34.7%. Without a significant change, it is likely to get worse. To many people, I would surmise that local politics appears to be a game that only a few seem to be playing.
“To cover political life as a game played between elites tells citizens that politics is a spectacle to be watched, not an activity to be participated in.”
There are ways to combat the politics as a game framing. Years ago, the Poynter Institute pioneered an alternative means to cover elections:
The idea was very simple: campaign coverage should be grounded in what voters want the candidates to talk about. Which voters? The ones you are trying to inform. 4/ This came to be called the “citizens agenda” approach to campaign coverage. It revolves around a single question. Here is the question: “What do you want the candidates to be discussing as they compete for votes?” From good answers to that everything else in the model flows. 5/
In Los Angeles, the average turnout rate for their municipal election is 9%.
Some brainstorming ensued and resulted in a simple goal: Find one person unsure of whether he or she was going to vote and make that person care about the election.
“We looked over census and voting data and looked at the people that were really unrepresented at the polls,” Muller said of how the station’s potential voter was selected.
“We imagined this non-voter would have to be someone who was under the age of 44, someone who’s a non-white voter, someone who has real interests that are affected by city decisions,” she said. They settled on Al, a chef and restaurateur, because he best represented someone “who had some real stakes in this election.”
And thus, #MakeAlCare was born. The station wanted its efforts to have a wide reach, so coming up with a hashtag for social media was a must. There was a methodical approach to researching and producing the series but it was not advocacy.
But again, my personal mission is to not increase voter turnout. The goal of this blog is to help foster a more generous city through civic action between elections. That being said, I believe that a city that is clearly responsive to its residents will ultimately result in more civic engagement, including voting.
So why does this mission feel so hard?
One answer to this question is that Windsor has a tradition of electing Strong Mayors. This means that the most efficient way to make change in the city is to privately petition the mayor with your idea and if he likes the plan, he can shape the budget and whip the City Council into providing the votes necessary for your idea to be made manifest.
But we need to remember that there must be other ways in which concerned residents can work with city employees, with city councilors, and even the mayor to make our city a happier, safer, and more generous place for ourselves and our neighbours.
Last week I attended the Ontario Library Association’s Superconference. It marked my third and last year on OLITA Council. OLITA is the Ontario Library Information Technology Association and it was an honour and a pleasure to serve as a part of it.
I mention this fact to give context to the following scenario. On Thursday morning of the conference, I was sitting in the Toronto Metro Conference Centre, listening to the keynote by Robyn Dolittle and how she described how she had uncovered terrible systematic problems in the police investigation of rape in Canada through her investigative reporting series called Unfounded. Because of her work and because she made academic research on the matter of rape more widely known, police forces across the country have reformed how they keep track of sexual assault statistics and some have taken steps to provide better training of their officers.
After her talk, I opened my phone which brought to my attention that, back in Windsor, there were several social media posts from two members of a local, government-funded technology business incubator who were complaining that the people were sharing the results of a recent research report about the poor economic status of women working in IT in Windsor, and by doing so they “were telegraphing negativity” , “were making things worse”, and “were part of the problem“.
The pay gap for women working tech jobs in Windsor is the highest in Canada’s metropolitan areas, according to a report prepared by the Brookfield Institute using data from Statistics Canada. The report said the average female tech worker in Windsor makes around $39,000 less — or 58 per cent — than what the average male makes.
I’m not going to extensively comment on these reactions to the reactions to this research because, frankly, I find them absurd. When you find evidence that a practice or a policy isn’t working, the solution is not to bury the research or the reporting of that evidence.
I believe in the power of investigative reporting to raise issues, to generate protest, to encourage the public to ask difficult questions, and to lead to the political and grassroots organizational work that is necessary to make change.
It is not possible for me to re-create Kate McInturff’s index of the best and worst cities in Canada for women. But I am going to try to see if I can find the data that might show if things have improved in our city since her last report in 2017.
The Making Women Count report was a comparison of how men and women are faring in five areas: economic security, leadership, health, personal security, and education. I have already covered personal security. With the release of the Brookfield report, it is a good as time as ever to check in with our state of economic security.
Economic Security
The score for economic security is calculated based on four indicators: employment rate, full-time employment, median employment income, and poverty rate, measured as the percentage living below the low-income measure after-tax (LIM-AT). Scores are calculated based on the female-to-male ratio for employment and incomes and the male-to-female ratio for poverty rates. The sources of the statistics are the Labour Force Survey and the Canadian Income Survey (for the poverty measure)
In doing this series I’ve learned that while there are many Statistics Canada reports that have some account of gender, these reports are generally at the national or provincial level. There are not many at the CMA (Census Metropolitan Area) or city level. It took great deal of labour to generate the city-level statistical tables behind the Making Women Count indexes.
3,710 women (compared to 2,405 men) live in our region and speak neither English nor French. – Creating barriers to accessing education, employment or services.
Median income for women after tax $27,050 (vs $40,881 for men); average $31,364 ($44,208) – they make less money.
Female income percentage from employment: 64% vs 72.6% for men – women are more dependent on government transfers for income than men. There is some qualification bias here.
81% of lone parent families are led by women. – single women are raising more kids then men.
After tax 7,300 women over the age of 15 have 0 total income (5,860 men)
52% of women live in the bottom half of the income distribution vs 48% of men.
30,120 women and girls are living in low income (LIM-AT) compared to 26,635 men and boys.
Workforce participation rate for women in the census was 56.1% compared to 64% for men.
I also appreciate that Frazier called out of Yvonne Pillon’s undermining the results of the Who are Canada’s Tech Workers report and of the Making Women Count series by challenging the methodology of both the Brooking Institute report and the CCPA reports, without providing any reason why.
This whole matter is not a surprise to me. It reminds of this quotation:
When you expose a problem you pose a problem. I have been thinking more about the problem of how you become the problem because you notice a problem. When exposing a problem is to become a problem then the problem you expose is not revealed. For example, when you make an observation in public that all the speakers for an event are all white men, or all but one, or all the citations in an academic paper are to all white men, or all but a few, these observations are often treated as the problem with how you are perceiving things (you must be perceiving things!) A rebuttal often follows that does not take the form of contradiction but rather explanation or justification…
This has happened to me. Two years ago I wrote a piece called Building a culture of critique that explained why I thought WETech Alliance’s Nerd Olympics was an activity that research has shown to turn women and other underrepresented groups away from STEM. The response I received from WETech Alliance was that I did not really understand the situation. I was told my perception was wrong.
Let us not forget that each data point in Statistics Canada is a person. The data made available to us from Statistics Canada shows us that the technology companies in Windsor are under-paying the women they employ. These women are real. They are being underpaid. It is not a problem of their perception.
The purpose of presenting local data is that it brings insight down to a level of a governance where we, the community, are able to make meaningful change. The fact that many cities in Canada do a much better job than Windsor in regards to how women fare suggests that we have the opportunity to learn and adopt the evidence-based policies and practices that they have employed. That is, we can do this if choose to read and learn from the research, rather than dismiss it.
I cannot see myself working with an organization whose president and employees publicly state that if I raise a matter of injustice related to sexism (or racism, class, or ableism for that matter) that I am “part of the problem”.
The second most spoken language in Windsor is not French or Italian, but Arabic.
In the Windsor area, 236,000 people cited English as their mother tongue in the 2016 census, compared to 230,845 in 2011. Also in the 2016 census, 13,580 people called their mother tongue Arabic, up from 10,515 in 2011. In 2016, 9,570 people said French was their mother tongue, slightly down from the 10,560 in 2011.
The next most common language in the Windsor area is Italian, spoken by 8,615 Windsor residents in 2016, compared to 9,715 in 2011.
In general, European languages lost ground in Windsor, with the exception of Spanish, while Arabic and Asian languages grew. The trend points to an increasingly multicultural community in Windsor, often billed as the fourth most ethnically diverse city in Canada.
Not far from where I live are a cluster of businesses of the Wyandotte Town Centre that I believe are largely Lebanese but if I interrogate myself, I would have to admit that I would not be able to back up why I think this is so. There is a lot of Arabic on the windows of these businesses. To my eyes, Arabic script looks beautiful but utterly and absolutely inscrutable.
I cannot recall a time when I went from stupid ignorance to dim understanding in such a short time. If there is a word for mental whiplash, that’s what I felt.
Spare 12 minutes. You’ll be amazed what you can learn. If you watch the above video, you will have more understanding of the Arabic language than at least one multi-million dollar company.
Journalist Anne Jarvis wrote of the event in her piece, ‘We have a lot of work to do‘ and added this context:
Only one woman was elected to Windsor city council last fall. The Caboto Club last year still wasn’t allowing women on its board. The community still hasn’t adequately addressed the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives report two years ago ranking Windsor the worst city in Canada for women, she said.
“Nobody’s saying there aren’t successful women in Windsor,” said Papadeas. “But we’re talking about poverty, economic inequality and other issues that need to be addressed,” she added, pointing to the 24 per cent of women in Windsor live in poverty compared to 15 per cent of men.
There was no Making Women Count report in 2018 because on July 27, 2018, CCPA Senior Researcher Kate McInturff passed away. She had been diagnosed with cancer three years prior.
And keeping in mind the vigil that I attended last Thursday, I thought I would start with the sub-index of personal security.
Personal Security
This gender equality index is modelled on global measures of gender equality produced by the World Economic Forum and the United Nations. Where possible, it captures the gap between men’s and women’s well-being rather than the overall wealth or health of a community. It also includes measures that capture the levels of gender-based violence experienced by women, and women’s access to health care services.
“The Best and Worst Places to be a Woman in Canada 2017: The Gender Gap in Canada’s 25 Biggest Cities”, Kate McInturf, CCPA, 2017, p. 83.
In 2017, Windsor ranked 20 out of the 25 examined cities when it comes to personal safety.
The score for personal security is calculated based on three indicators: rates of criminal harassment, sexual assault, and intimate partner violence. The data for all three indicators comes from the Uniform Crime Reporting Survey (UCR). The UCR is compiled by Statistics Canada from police-reported data. Police-reported data is used here in the absence of self-reported data, which is much more accurate. Statistics Canada estimates that 95% of the incidents of sexual assault and harassment and 70% of the incidents of intimate partner violence are never reported to the police. Further, differences in how police forces record incidents and charge perpetrators can create differences between recorded levels of violence that have nothing to do with the actual levels of crime. However, the only current survey of self-reported incidence of sexual assault and intimate partner violence is the General Social Survey on Victimization, which is only performed once every five years and which does not sample a sufficient portion of the population to provide estimates at the municipal level or at the provincial level.
“The Best and Worst Places to be a Woman in Canada 2017: The Gender Gap in Canada’s 25 Biggest Cities”, Kate McInturf, CCPA, 2017, p. 84.
“The Best and Worst Places to be a Woman in Canada 2017” used custom data sets from the Statistics Canada, Incident-based Uniform Crime Reporting Survey to generate the Personal Security Index. There was not enough information in the methodology section that went into detail of how one could duplicate these custom sets, so I looked for comparable published tables from Statistics Canada.
I wasn’t able to find a published Statistics Canada table that had already broke down this reported data by city. Someone with access to the microdata of CAMSIM should be able to extract this information.
“Say her name”
At last week’s Women’s March Windsor vigil, there were several elected officials present: Ward 3 Councilor Rino Bortolin, Ward 9 City Councilor Kieran McKenzie, Amherstburg Councilor Donald McArthur, Windsor West MP Brian Masse, W-T MP Cheryl Hardcastle, Essex MP Tracy Ramsey, as well as School Board Trustees Jessica Sartori, Julia Burgess, Alicia Higgison, and Sarah Cipkar.
If you were politically naive, you may have expected Drew Dilkens, the mayor of Windsor, to have been present at the vigil in light of the fact that the mayor personally led a walk in October of 2017 in support of a 75-year-old woman who was brutally assaulted on the Ganatchio Trail. Anne Widholm passed away December 17th, 2018, just a month prior to the Women’s March Windsor vigil.
When I read the articles about that October 2017 walk, I noticed that the mayor makes it a point to say that despite the attack, the parks of Windsor are safe. He also stated that the attack could have happened anywhere.
“This walk is being held to show our support for Mrs. Widholm and her family, to reassure each other that our community stands together as one in times of distress, and to reaffirm that our community’s parks and trails are safe.”
Dilkens says it’s “a terrible, tragic, unfortunate event” but he also notes the attack could have happened anywhere. “This was a random unprovoked attack, it could have happened in Riverside, South Windsor it could have happened in Sandwich Town or Downtown. There is no correlation between the location or where it happened and the actual attack itself,” said Dilkens.
Let us not forget that there are correlations between location and the personal safety of women. Some cities in Canada are safer than others.
Rather than insisting – despite the evidence before us – that the city is safe, let us work together and find ways to make the investments and develop the policies to make Windsor safer for all.
Fusion Tables was often used by journalists, scientists, and others interested in quickly plotting data on a Google Map without having to do any coding. Google encouraged users to switch to other products, like its BigQuery cloud data warehouse system, its Google Data Studio business intelligence tool, or simply Google Sheets. The company says it’s also working to make other mapping tools, currently used internally, available.
Fusion tables was not widely used but I used it and I frequently recommended it to students and those interested in mapping who weren’t familiar with GIS (Geographical Information Systems) or those unwilling to learn how to cobble together geospatial data with geospatial javascript libraries.
And so I believe I will be switching my go-to recommendation for easiest geospatial tool to Google Earth. This is counter-intuitive, I know. Why use Google’s globe software to make a map? Why not use Google Maps?
The majority of residents are serviced with either sanitary and storm sewers or by a combined sewer system.
– Storm Sewers carry stormwater runoff only. Storm Sewers eventually drain to the Detroit River, untreated. There are 732 kilometres of storm sewers within the City of Windsor
– Sanitary Sewers are designed to convey human domestic waste only to the City’s Waste Water Treatment facilities. The City of Windsor maintains approximately 675 kilometres of sanitary sewers.
– Combined Sewers were constructed throughout the City until the 1950s. Combined Sewers carry both storm water and sanitary waste. The City of Windsor is working towards replacement of the 228 kilometres of combined sewers with a separated system (separate sanitary and storm) where practical. Unfortunately, this will not happen quickly.
Notice that in the left hand column there are check marks for each of the different type of sewer systems. I opted to select only the Combined sewer system and I changed its default colour from green to yellow so it could be more visible. Now we can easily see where the 228 kilometres of combined sewers are distributed in the city.
There are other benefits to using Google Earth to explore the City of Windsor. If you zoom in enough, Google Earth will change its point of view to Google Street View. I know that under the street where I live is a combined sewer system!
If you virtually drive a couple blocks over and you can see both a combined sewer line as well as a storm sewer line (in blue).
And that is how to you can use Google Earth to look under the streets that you live.
If the City of Windsor paid for this feature, the City would also be able to record every vote – without having every vote to be recorded.
Let me explain the above.
If you read the minutes of past Windsor City Council meetings, you will see that it will note whether a certain measure was carried or failed to carry but it will not state who voted for or against said motion.
But if a Council Member requests it, all votes will be recorded in the minutes:
So why is every vote recorded at the City of Windsor? To be honest, I’m not entirely sure but it appears the decision to record votes might be for strategic reasons.
By-law-98-2011 A BY-LAW TO PROVIDE RULES GOVERNING THE PROCEEDINGS OF WINDSOR CITY COUNCIL MEETINGS AND ITS COMMITTEES AND THE CONDUCT OF ITS MEMBERS [pdf]
As you can read from the above, a recorded vote requires every member of City Council to vote (unless constrained by a conflict of interest) – including the mayor. From what I can tell, it is the mayor’s current practice to not vote on matters unless required by a tie among council members or by a request for a recorded vote. I’m not entirely sure how consistent our mayor is in this practice because – irony – I have no voting record for the mayor to look up. This is unlike Toronto, where the votes of all councilors and the mayor are readily available for download.
The past votes of Windsor City Council that have been recorded have not been extracted and made readily available unlike Windsor City Council Meeting Attendance. And the reason why meeting attendance is recorded suggests to me what needs to occur if we would like to have all votes recorded at City Council:
Windsor City Council adopted the following resolution at its meeting held March 8, 2010:
M83-2010 That City Council ESTABLISH, through Council Services, an attendance tracking system for City Councillors, posted on the City website, recording month-to-month attendances and absences, starting on March 8, 2010, for Council meetings, In-Camera meetings, Budget Meetings, Advisory Committees, Agencies and Board meetings, with a notice protocol for Councillors to indicate the reason for absences, including conflicts with any other City-related meetings or obligations. Absences at special meetings and budget meetings when seven days notice is not provided will also be exempt. A link to minutes of full Council meetings, starting in March 2010, will also be provided on the website, indicating absences from Council votes.
