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Port Hardy council cancels Feb. 14 meeting to attend ‘elected official seminar training’

The seminars are put on to develop the knowledge, skillset, and contact base for elected officials
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District of Port Hardy municipal signage. (North Island Gazette file photo)

Port Hardy mayor and council won’t be at the municipal hall for their regular meeting on Feb. 14.

Why is that, you might be wondering? Well, according to the District of Port Hardy’s website, the meeting has been cancelled due to “LGLA Elected Official Seminar Training.”

When asked to comment, the district’s Director of Corporate and Development Services/Deputy CAO Ross Blackwell confirmed the training is “a program that is put on to help develop the knowledge, skillset, and contact base for elected officials.”

He noted while the seminar is in Richmond and runs from Feb. 8-10, there’s an Association of Vancouver Island Coastal Communities seminar series in Nanaimo from Feb. 15-17 that council is also planning to attend, which means the Feb. 14 council meeting would have to be cancelled.

“The seminars are for returning councillors, as well as new councillors,” Blackwell added, which is why there won’t be enough councillors in town to make quorum (minimum number of councillors needed to make decisions) on Feb. 14.

Some of the important topics at these meetings will be the fine art of agreeing and disagreeing, the code of conduct for council, roles and responsibilities, the functioning of a council, role clarity and decision making, and local government financial management.

“You could look at this as the taxpayers making a commitment to investing in the officials they elected,” Blackwell said. “The community has a pretty dedicated group of elected officials who are really keen to learn as much as they can so that they can really make a difference during their four-year term, it’s pretty inspiring to see.”


@NIGazette
editor@northislandgazette.com

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Tyson Whitney

About the Author: Tyson Whitney

I have been working in the community newspaper business for nearly a decade, all of those years with Black Press Media.
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