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New city council gets down to work

Transparency among immediate goals
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Thorold's newly elected council take their seats for the first time. Tony Vandermaas/Thorold News

Just eleven days into their term, Thorold City Council met in Committee of the Whole Tuesday evening for their third orientation session. The first was held before they were sworn in and consisted of introductions to the various City departments and their staff.

The second was on December 4, and began with each Councillor and the Mayor signing their Oath of Office. This was followed by administrative items, including seating, appointing the Mayor’s alternate, appointments of Councillors to Committees and Boards, meeting procedures, and training in how to use their new tablet for their paperless documents.

Tuesday night’s meeting continued their orientation, with accessibility, health and safety, and harassment training on the agenda, along with a general financial overview, Fire Department information, and an overview of how Community Grants are intended to be distributed.

Before this third training session, however, the new Council made their appointments of citizens to the City’s Committees and Boards. While some of these had more volunteers than required, there were yet some that had few applicants, with the result that those who applied were accepted and there will be additional advertising by the City for more applications to fill the vacancies.

The councillors returning councillors and Mayor Terry Ugulini were faced with a new system for choosing the appointments this time around, although the first-time Council members were entirely new to the process.

In the past, appointments were made by a small Selection Committee in-camera and then presented to Council for approval. With the intent of increasing transparency, however, this term the candidates were picked by the entire Committee of the Whole, referring to applicants by letter. As required by law, they did to go in-camera for an extended period to more comprehensively discuss specific candidates.

The successful candidates will be notified of their appointments after the minutes of this meeting are ratified by full Council on December 18.

Two more orientation sessions are scheduled for the new Council in January.