By Pepper Parr
February 19th, 2021
BURLINGTON, ON
Have you ever seen something like this before?
BAR forms (Budget Action Requests) are documents Councillors use to bring forward changes they would like to see made in the budget Staff have put forward.
The Gazette has learned that the Clerk has informed a member of Council that the item that was put forward must be treated as confidential.
Confidential matters are determined and governed by the Municipal Act and usually relate to matters that involve a named individual or a property matter.
There is much more to this story.
This Council seems to have more “confidential items” and go into closed session more frequently than any other Council in the Region (as judged by a review of Council minutes). Are there published Regional comparisons and is there a publicly available record (i.e. on the COB website) of the number of closed sessions and the rationale? Perhaps the Clerk could answer as the ‘champion’ of open government initiatives for the City.