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Saugeen Shores Town Councillor, Victoria Serda, brought forward a
motion at Monday night's council meeting, but it was not to be.
The original motion was to initiate a 'strategic visioning' session
whereby councillors under the direction of a contracted facilitator
could begin to look at long term visionary ways of determining the
direction in which they (council) want the town to go in the future.
"I absolutely believe we need to start looking ahead long term," said
Serda. "We are now looking at going forward with a pool and, perhaps, a
theatre. We need to look at an entire overview of the whole picture for
the municipality. I appreciate that this council is very particular
about being open with people and we don't want a back-door type of thing
that we see in other places."
Mayor Mike Smith said that he had "...a problem with the term 'strategic
visioning'. What does that mean?" he asked.
Councillor Fred Shildroth, stated that he had long been an advocate for
a review of assets held by the town. "I'm not sure this should be done
in a public forum," he said. "I am not sure what the Municipal Act says
about what can be held behind closed doors related to land acquisition
or disposition and I'm not sure some of those should be made public
before a consensus by Council has been determined."
Mayor Smith assured that anything and everything that was allowed would
be held publicly and not behind closed doors. (next column)
13/01/2009 04:14 PM
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(continued)
"The intention of the motion," explained Luke
Charbonneau (who seconded the original motion), "is to have an exercise
to enable us to deal with issues and financing around things like
capital projects. We need to get a better sense of how to move forward."
While he seconded the original motion, Charbonneau also came up with the
amendment to it, changing the term 'strategic visioning' to 'training
exercise'.
Serda expressed her displeasure at the change in
terminology. "To me, strategic visioning is looking at everything for
the future and, instead, we are going to have a training exercise that
looks at pieces. This is not what I put forward. I am not against
training but, as councillors, we owe it to the people who elected us, to
look at the big picture for the future of this municipality and we are
not doing that on this council. A facilitator would be important to keep
things in line as per an agenda"
Since a motion was brought forward and, because the mover (Serda) was
against the amendment change, Council first had to vote on the original
motion. It was defeated.
The motion was then changed to incorporate the new amended wording
proposed by Charbonneau and a second vote was held. The newly amended
motion was passed with Serda opposing.
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