One local councillor is asking to reopen discussion around governance of water and wastewater services in the Municipality of Chatham-Kent.
Councillor Carmen McGregor will present motion at tonight’s meeting, asking council to revisit the KPMG Chatham-Kent Public Utilities Commission (PUC) Governance Review that was presented to council on February 2. The motion asks council to direct administration to prepare a report addressing questions raised during that special council meeting.
Council was split on dissolving the PUC, a decision that would shift water and wastewater governance directly under municipal council. In municipal government, a split vote automatically fails a motion.
Councillor McGregor now wants to examine a part of the KPMG report that identified the benefits of a skills based advisory committee joining the PUC.
“Right now our board is made up of a councillor from each ward,” McGregor told CKXS News.
“What this motion would do is allow some councillors but also some industry experts or knowledgeable people in the PUC world to also sit on the commission. Which would help with the governance structure of the commission when we are making big decisions about projects and different things. Councillors aren’t trained in the PUC world so they don’t necessarily understand everything in the decisions we need to make.”
If this motion passes, the councillor from Ward 5 wants administration to have enough time before the next election to implement the necessary changes and restructure who sits on the PUC.
“You want somebody that is not an employee or not an employee of the municipality, so you want somebody independent of the municipality,” said C. McGregor.
“And from the PUC so that they can give advice and recommendations and understand some of the reports and issues that we look at through the PUC.”
The motion also asks administration to explore potential changes to the commission’s terms of reference, including how skills-based members would be recruited, how decision-making would work between council and the commission, and how similar governance models operate in other municipalities.
If approved, administration will bring a report back to council for the May 11th meeting.
