Motion on attendance policy is defeated
Posted Jun 14, 2011 07:22:33 AM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
A motion brought to Kitchener Council by Councillor Frank Etherington on changing conference attendance policies has been defeated.
Etherington brought the motion forward after the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM) conference in Halifax was attended by eight Kitchener Councillors. In Etheringtons remarks at on this, he noted that he is not opposed to the learning and networking experience to be had by attending conferences.
However he suggested “we rotate them so we don’t send 8 or 11 people to the same conference”.
Councillor and President of the FCM, Berry Verbanovic, said there were 205 municipalities with atleast 4 delegates in participation at the FCM conference in Halifax, 103 with 6 reps or more, and 48 municipalities with 8 or more.
Verbanovic said “so obviously others are seeing the value of participation in this organization, in seeing more than just a couple people participate. Both the learning and the networking and the exchange of ideas that comes from something like this”.
Councillor Zyg Janecki was a little disappointed that Kitchener Council only sent 8 councillors “we all should have been there,” and that conferences like the FCM are “money well spent”.
Councillor Bil Ioannidis reflected on his childhood and shared a memory of his parents teaching him that education is the key to success, “without education and self reflection, it is difficult to make decisions”. Ioannidis said that it’s short sighted to say that conferences are a waste of money”.
The motion, broken into two clauses; that any conference be restricted to the Mayor or Councillors holding executive position with Council and that the limit of conferences allowed to be attended from 3 to 2 per year. Both clauses were defeated.
The first 10-1 and the second 8-3.
