Editor:
Monday, during the Surrey council meeting, a corporate report recommended a five-minute limit be added to the Council Procedure Bylaw, which currently has no time limits for the citizens to speak to council on public-hearing matters – the only time citizens are heard on record speaking to council.
This council has reduced opportunities for delegations at public hearings to only 18 meetings in the calendar year.
Council is destroying open consultations and transparency debate by this five-minute rule, because on the few occasions when hearings like Hawthorne Park and Coyote Creek came before council, these meetings went on beyond midnight, as the citizens of Surrey turned out to speak. Council did not like that.
We live in a free democratic society here in Surrey where we welcome peoples from all walks of life, but council will not allow us to be heard. Shame on council.
The report cites six other municipalities use the five-minute rule, and another 10 a minute rule. Within the Greater Vancouver region, there are 26 municipalities and one district that do let their citizens speak.
Surrey would join the silent minority if council approves this report and changes the bylaw.
Free speech for all.
Richard T. Landale, Surrey
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An open letter to Surrey council.
It is with great disappointment that I discovered Corporate Report 2018-R026 issued Thursday for Monday’s public-hearing meeting.
There are 52 weeks a year, and only 18 of them have a public council meeting where concerned citizens can actually address council for at least the appearance of being heard.
If there are too many people with too much to say that it creates inconvenient time overruns on the meetings, the more democratic approach would be to offer more meeting dates – as opposed to time limits on people who wish to be heard. There is a full three-month stretch during the year when such meetings occur just three times.
I respectfully suggest that if council’s meeting agendas are running too long, then perhaps the schedule of meetings should be reconsidered to ensure that every matter that requires a public hearing gets its fair chance to be heard.
I further suggest, respectfully, that public hearings are already quite time-limited due the aforementioned frequency and scheduling. Please consider that the fairness intended by the public-hearing process is much better served by a different approach that does not create additional limitations.
Jodi Murphy, Surrey