Action Alert!
Please sign the UserVoice Petition at https://barrie.uservoice.com/forums/225715-make-a-suggestion/suggestions/45303736-for-transparency-and-accountability-record-and-pu
For transparency and accountability, record and publish each vote made by City Council
To increase transparency and accountability, it would be great if each vote cast by a member of City Council was recorded and made public in an easily consumable fashion.
When city council meetings were virtual, a citizen could easily determine how each member of council voted on each item. However now that meetings are being held in person, this is simply not possible. Even in person, the individual votes are not always clear from the gallery.
Here are a couple of examples of how other municipalities have done this:
the City of Toronto provides a searchable system to show all votes by councillor: http://app.toronto.ca/tmmis/getAdminReport.do?function=prepareMemberVoteReport
the City of Kingston includes the voting results for each item within their minutes:
Please sign the UserVoice Petition at https://barrie.uservoice.com/forums/225715-make-a-suggestion/suggestions/45303736-for-transparency-and-accountability-record-and-pu
Editor's Note: As part of our "Council Report Card" for the current term, Engage Barrie is compiling attendance and voting records (among other things) for each member of Council. While the City has started keeping attendance records, there is no record available of how each member of Council voted, other than motions where a "recorded vote" was requested – leaving it to private citizens to do the "detective work" themselves. This is an issue of Accountability and Transparency (two of our pillars).
One of our newest Contributing Members, James Kerekes, has set up a UserVoice petition – once a petition reaches 500 signatures, the City's policy is to put the item under review. Please sign and share!
Engage Barrie Organization encourages our members and guests to contribute blog posts on a variety of topics that fall under our "equitable, empowered, engaged" umbrella, in the hopes of sharing a variety of perspectives and experiences. Please be aware that the views and opinions expressed by our blog contributors do not necessarily reflect any official position of Engage Barrie Organization.