Effective and responsive governance requires robust public engagement. The job of government, after all, is to carry out the people’s business.
In order to better serve the public, members of the Vancouver City Council should reexamine how they engage with the public and how they can effectively hear and assess the concerns of constituents.
As detailed in a recent article by Columbian reporter Alexis Weisend, this can be a complex issue. But one broad and simple improvement at the city level would be to provide councilors’ government emails and phone numbers to the public.
Currently, city councilors are essentially inaccessible for the people who pay their salaries. Spokesman Tim Becker told The Columbian that councilor’s email addresses were removed from the city’s website in 2022 after an uptick in cybersecurity incidents. Mayor Anne McEnerny-Ogle said the policy was the result of an onslaught of spam email.
Those assertions do not withstand scrutiny. Private businesses manage to implement security measures — and employee training — that allow public access while preventing computer networks from being infiltrated. They also manage to use filters that reduce the amount of irrelevant email. City government certainly can do the same.
Remembering that elected officials are employees and citizens are their employers further illuminates the issue. Imagine if you did not provide a work email or phone number to your boss and that your supervisor was unable to contact you regarding issues big or small. The guess is that the situation would quickly be rectified.
Listening to the public is the fundamental piece of the job description for elected officials. In the digital age, that means being reachable by email.
Beyond that, however, the accessibility issues facing the city council are more intricate.
Constituents have complained about a policy that limits public comment at council meetings to agenda items, an approach adopted in 2011. At that time, council meetings included a “community forum” at the end that allowed comment on any issue. The council abolished the community forum in 2022.
“It seems like every place else, it’s much easier to speak to the city councils than it is here in Vancouver,” one Vancouver resident told The Columbian. “They’re very, very isolated.”
There are valid reasons for limiting unsolicited comments. From city councils to school boards to health boards, many a public meeting throughout the country has been hijacked by activists pushing a specific concern. Allowing an open forum for comments about issues unrelated to Vancouver would diminish the city council’s ability to conduct relevant business.
The Vancouver City Council maintains some flexibility regarding public engagement. At a recent meeting, the council agreed to allow comments about a particular homeless encampment, although the issue was not on the agenda.
Councilor Sarah Fox said, “When the public comes to speak to us, the reason we limit it to speaking about things on the agenda is to give us more information before we make decisions that are on the agenda.”
The question then involves how issues appear on the agenda. If councilors limit engagement with the public, they may be unaware of festering problems until those problems become unavoidable.
All of this speaks to the importance of public engagement in effectively serving that public. In Vancouver, accessibility to councilors is necessary for improving that engagement.
