Adam Prudhomme
Editor
Greater Napanee council will meet via Zoom on Tuesday at 5:30 p.m. to talk about the possibility of in-person meetings.
The special meeting, which will be broadcast on the town’s YouTube channel, will cover a variety of topics relating to declaration of emergency, which the town has been under since March due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The need for a special was determined during Tuesday’s regular meeting, when council was originally discussing extending the current state of emergency to at least Sept. 22, their second scheduled meeting that month.
Councillor Bob Norrie, as he has in previous meetings, once again expressed his desire to remove the state of emergency. He says town council isn’t being kept in the loop with some of the decisions being made at the upper tiers of town staff.
“The biggest thing for me when I saw these last minutes for Meeting 31, that’s only the second set of minutes I’ve seen of their meetings,” said Norrie. “The perception of secrecy, I’m opposed to continuing the declaration of emergency.”
He noted he feels there hasn’t been enough communication during the state of emergency.
“We as council have not received, even though we were told we would be, (Mayor Marg Isbester has) called a few times and that’s great, the actual written communication has been very poor and we’ve been left in the dark,” said Norrie. “I just feel the state of emergency should be lifted now.”
Included in the state of emergency is a special by-law that allows council to meet virtually. Lifting the emergency would mean council would have to meet in person. Because physical distancing protocols would still be in place, the amount of people allowed to attend the meeting would be limited. In order to allow the public to watch the meetings, they’d have to be live streamed. The town has been preparing for that eventuality and has obtained the equipment to live stream, however they’re yet to decide on a location for the meetings. That is expected to be sorted out at Tuesday’s meeting, should they decide to lift the state of emergency.
Based on the last meeting, Norrie’s plan to lift the ban would have the support of councillor Terry Richardson. He agreed with Norrie, adding part of the reason the state of emergency was called was so that town staff could quickly receive any funding that was handed down from the Canadian government as part of COVID-19 relief measures.
“There is no more federal money coming before the 22 or 23 of September,” said Richardson, noting that Parliament wouldn’t be meeting before then. “I suspect once they do get back sitting in Parliament, there will be a whole number of things that are far more important than dishing money out.”
Council has discussed several possible in-person meeting locations at previous meetings, listing town hall, Selby Hall and the Strathcona Paper Centre as possible options.