Public hearings in St. Albert will now feature early deadlines for written submissions, and allow residents to speak to new factual information, after temporary hearing rules put in place for Riverbank Landing have been made permanent.
On May 31 St. Albert city council voted to make the changes they made for the Riverbank Landing public hearing applicable for all future public hearings.
Council first started tinkering with the procedures for the hearings on May 17, and while administration first proposed making changes for just the upcoming Riverbank Landing hearing, council was not keen to create special rules for one hearing.
On May 17 Mayor Cathy Heron spoke out against bringing in special rules for the upcoming Riverbank hearing, saying the changes could easily be made to the overall rules for public hearings.
"My biggest problem is the perception is poor,” Heron said.
The suggestion to alter the rules initially just for the Riverbank hearing came from administration, which Marta Caufield, deputy solicitor for the city, said they originally looked into because the city doesn’t really have a “good legal basis for the electronic format that we're using."
Once they examined altering the online format, Caufield said they decided to clarify other rules, and then recommend successful changes for the permanent public-hearing rules.
But all of council struggled with implementing the changes just for one meeting.
“Calling this particular public hearing out and creating special rules around it is maybe what I'm not comfortable with,” said Coun. Jacquie Hansen. Mayor Heron agreed.
Caufield said if the changes for Riverbank Landing weren’t made by May 17, it would have been too late to implement them. Administration would have had to come back with a new bylaw for all public hearings, which council wouldn’t be able to debate and vote on with enough time to also allow for public advertising – a requirement by the provincial government – before the Riverbank Landing hearing.
In the end, council decided to make the temporary changes for the Riverbank Landing hearing to meet the deadline, but voted unanimously to have administration bring back those changes in the next meeting so council could permanently implement them in the public-hearing rules.
The rules came back on May 31, and the changes passed unanimously, although council expanded the definition of the “new information” residents could speak to during the hearing, allowing for response to new facts and not opposing feelings expressed.
Members of council were initially concerned that allowing residents to speak to new information would create a never-ending hearing, with residents debating each other rather than presenting new information for council to hear.
Coun. Ray Watkins, who also works as a developer, said he has likely spoken at100 public hearings in Edmonton, which allow residents to speak to new information, and it is always managed well by the mayor and council.
David Leflar, city director of legal and legislative services, said public hearings can be messy and it is difficult to judge what people are going to say or do in advance.
“We just have to react to events as they occur. That's the essential nature of public hearings. You can't script them – you don't want to script them. You want people to be able to say spontaneously what is on their mind.
“It's inherently messy but that's democracy,” Leflar said
Along with being able to speak to new information, residents will not be required to state how they are affected by the development. Written submissions emailed to the city can come in no later than noon on the Wednesday before the public hearing, so they can be included in the meeting agenda package, given out to councillors, and posted on the city website.
In the end, council felt they came up with a good set of rules for public hearings.
Coun. Sheena Hughes said council has done everything they can to have a fair public hearing that will address everybody’s concerns.
“I think that all these amendments we've done today are an indication that we are doing everything we can to make sure that everybody's being heard, and everything's being as fair and as above-board and as fair as possible," Hughes said.
“I feel a lot more comfortable with this."
Although council made the changes to the rules, the new council selected in the upcoming Oct. 18 election will likely set out their own new rules to public hearing procedures.
