Adam Prudhomme
Editor
Greater Napanee council may have a new temporary home when they next meet in person.
When, where and for how long they’d meet off site is yet to be determined. The notion was brought up during a Zoom style virtual meeting on May 19, with council ultimately deciding to put over any decision until the next meeting on June 9.
When council does again start to meet in person, physical distancing measures will likely still be in place. That means council members and staff would have to be seated at least six feet apart. That would leave no room for the public to attend the meetings and they’d have to be live streamed.
Meeting again at their regular council chambers is one possibility, though the chambers are rather cramped. It’s also likely town staff would have to move their workspace upstairs into the chamber in order to maintain physical distancing when they return to work.
Other options for council meeting locations include the Selby or North Fred halls, or possibly the Strathcona Paper Centre-though that facility remains earmarked for patient overflow in the event Lennox and Addington County General Hospital was overwhelmed with patients.
“Although we don’t have a crystal ball, it is very possible that a requirement for physical distancing could run through December,” said Greater Napanee CAO Ray Callery. “When we’re talking about a temporary council chamber we’re not just talking about maybe a couple of months, we’re thinking it could be maybe a location that we have to use for a period of time moving forward, possibly even to the start of 2021.”
Each option will come with a cost as the town currently doesn’t have the technology to live stream-though they were in the process of looking into it before the COVID-19 pandemic forced everyone into lockdown. As such, they’ve budgeted about $30,000 for the project.
Though ultimately the plan is to live stream from town hall, for now they could purchase the equipment and set it up at another location.
.The equipment could then be moved to town hall once it was deemed safe to hold meetings open to the public in the regular chambers.
Of the options listed, deputy mayor Max Kaiser preferred Selby in that it already had a tower in place for live streaming and is currently without a tennant.
“I want to meet in person,” said Kaiser. “I want to get back to that sense of normalcy. I don’t like this situation (meeting via Zoom) that we’re dealing with and I want to get back to the same room. Having a room that big (in Selby) allows for our staff to be in the room with us…That’s a good spot and it serves a lot of purpose and it checks off a lot of things on the list of needs in order to provide that for us.”
Councillors Ellen Johnson, Bob Norrie, Terry Richardson and John McCormack expressed concern over spending the money needed to live stream and requested staff put together a report of potential costs for each possible location, which would be discussed at the next meeting. The motion passed with four votes to three.
-Unrelated to COVID-19, town council was already planning to hold an offsite meeting on June 16 in Adolphustown to celebrate the anniversary of the landing of the United Empire Loyalists to the region. That offsite meeting has now been officially postponed and will be held virtually.
-A more detailed budget report is expected at the next meeting, but early indications are the town isn’t too far behind in terms of collecting tax dollars.
“We’re doing fairly well as far as residents making their tax payments and water payments,” said Paul Dowber, general manager of finance services/treasurer for Greater Napanee. “We’re just down under five per cent from last year during the January to April 30 time period and even lower in the water payments in three per cent.”
Dowber says their biggest loss of income has been from lost rentals at places such as the SPC, the second biggest from lifting the requirement for paid bag tags.
Unlike the provincial or federal level, a municipal government can’t run a deficit. As it looks right now, the town is in good shape in that regard.
“At this time I don’t see that we should be worrying too much at this time in the sense that I believe staff has been very diligent in cost saving measures and we are looking at basically squeezing every penny that we can out to ensure that we do not arrive at a deficit position,” added Dowber.