Lunch treachery

Among plenty of other concerns, the eviction of the Occupy Nova Scotia group from Victoria Park highlights Halifax council’s over-reliance, and likely illegal, use of secret meetings (see “Remembrance Day Shame,” pg TK). But secret council meetings are nothing new, and council finds still other ways to keep the public and press from watching its deliberations, including a controversial set of meetings called “lunch and learns,” when council holes itself up behind closed doors in Halifax Hall for lunch, and various invited guests come in to give presentations.

Last summer, councillor Jennifer Watts asked the city solicitor, Mary Ellen Donovan, for an opinion on which council meetings should be open to the public, and specifically asked about Lunch and Learns. Donovan responded with an exhaustive memo on July 26, summarizing as follows: “Bottom line: Where all members of council are invited to attend, and the meeting is not just an educational session, such as is the case with many HRM ‘lunch and learns,’ but instead is a discussion leading to a reasonably imminent decision, such as on the budget, that meeting is a meeting which the public is entitled to attend.”

Next Tuesday council is holding a lunch and learn with directors of the city’s Business Improvement Districts invited to give presentations. Some time in the future, council will vote on funding for these very same BIDs---in other words, this lunch and learn will very definitely result in a “reasonably imminent decision, such as on the budget.” Still, the meeting is not on the publicly available list of council meetings, and councillor Linda Mosher’s request that the lunch and learn be made public has been met with stony silence from both mayor Peter Kelly and Donovan.

I intend on attending the lunch and learn in my capacity as a reporter. We’ll see what happens.