NON-JURISDICTIONAL MATTERS AND STAYING IN OUR LANE

Kyla Knowles Sharing A Treat With Port Moody Police

During the Regular Council meeting of April 9 2024, Cllr. Morrison and I served the following motion:

THAT Council direct staff to report back on how the City might amend and strengthen Corporate Policy – 01-0530-2016-02 – Non-Jurisdictional Items to better prevent non-jurisdictional matters from being placed on Council agendas.

AND THAT the report include an environmental scan of best practices by other municipalities;

AND THAT the findings be shared for discussion at an upcoming Governance and Legislation Committee meeting.

Moved, seconded, and CARRIED (Voting against: Councillors Lubik and Lurbiecki)

The current wording of our policy is as follows: 

Non-Jurisdictional Items (01-0530-2016-01 – amended 2017)

Requests to Council for delegations or resolutions on non-jurisdictional issues will not be placed on the Council agenda for consideration unless requested specifically by a member of Council.

Procedures:

• During the agenda review process, the Mayor, City Manager, and Corporate Officer will distinguish non-jurisdictional items from those that will be placed on the agenda.

• Non-Jurisdictional Issues will be circulated to Council for information. A member of Council may ask that a Non-Jurisdictional Issue be placed on the agenda, whereupon Council will vote to determine if the issue will be considered. Proponents of Non-Jurisdictional Issues will be sent a letter from the Corporate Officer explaining Council’s policy.

This policy is to be administered and monitored by the Mayor, City Manager, and Corporate Officer.

What This Policy Means For Port Moody Residents

The policy currently defines non-jurisdictional Issues as issues over which Council does not have legal, financial, geographic, or operational effect.

As background, we brought this motion forward after a simple majority of Council decided, despite the wording in our existing City policy, to allow a delegation/request asking the City of Port Moody to advocate to the federal government regarding an international conflict.

This decision resulted in a period of significant unrest and division in our community and, between March and April of 2024, Council received dozens of emails urging Port Moody City Council to NOT render pronouncements or weigh in on the international conflict in question, and to keep matters of federal jurisdiction and foreign affairs away from the municipal table.

The role of City Council is to set policy, and it is staff's responsibility (namely the City Manager/CAO and Corporate Officer) to implement the policies set by Council. That is indisputable. However, when policies set by Council are unclear, contradictory, or open to interpretation (as Cllr. Morrison and I believed this one to be), they become ineffective.

In our case, policy ambiguity led to a majority of Council overruling its own non-jurisdictional items policy by choosing to interpret it in a manner that we do not believe was intended, and which Councillor Morrison and I believed this could have been avoided had our policy around non-jurisdictional items been clearer.

When the item returned to Council during the GOVERNANCE & LEGISLATION COMMITTEE MEETING on APRIL 15, 2025, staff presented their recommendation, noting that the policy review had presented a good opportunity to also review our current lighting and delegation procedures to ensure all three policies are aligned.   

Here is the staff memo and recommendation: In essence, Staff's recommendation was to repeal our policy on non-jurisdictional items entirely, and instead add new language into our Council Procedure Bylaw to be consistent with other communities.  It also recommended that requests from "faith-based organizations, political parties, political candidates and/or subject matter deemed political in nature" and "requests pertaining to polarizing events that divide, rather than unite, the community" fall outside the revised policies.

It is a comprehensive piece of work that includes an environmental scan of practices by other communities and, in my estimation, resulted in a clean and clear recommendation to help our City focus on local issues rather than divisive federal issues and conflicts. It recognizes that it is Council's job to set policy and staff's job is to implement that policy. 

Convention and protocol dictates that the person(s) bringing forward the motion speaks first. As such, I moved staff's recommendation and provided my comments and thanks for their work. I feel staff had done a great job of aligning all related policies and removing Council from decisions and pronouncements outside our jurisdiction with the goal of keeping our community united and focused on local issues. 

A few minutes prior to meeting start, Cllr Agtarap distributed a replacement/alternative motion which, Councillor Morrison and I believed, completely undermined the spirit of the original motion because it proposed aligning with federal policies, as follows:

"THAT staff report back with a new lighting schedule that would be aligned with the federal and provincial lists of important and commemorative days, AND THAT the schedule for the reminder of 2025 be a hybrid of the city's current schedule and the federal and provincially recognized days."

Because my motion was already on the floor, procedure dictated that we needed to deal with that motion first before entertaining a replacement motion.

Cllr. Lurbiecki spoke next, and made clear she would not be supporting the recommended change to the current non-jurisdictional policy.

Cllr. Lubik spoke next, saying she's opposed to limiting Council's ability to weigh in on non-jurisdictional items. She also moved an amendment that in addition to including all federal and provincially-recognized days, Council also include "National Day of Action against Islamophobia" and "National Day Against Asian Hate".  (Amendment Seconded: Cllr. Agtarap)

(Voting for Amendment: Cllrs. Lubik, Agtarap and Lurbiecki. Opposed: Cllrs. Dilworth, Lahti, Knowles and Morrison)

Final votes:

• Council directed staff to draft amendments to the City of Port Moody Council Procedure Bylaw to address non-jurisdictional matters. (Opposed: Cllrs. Lurbiecki and Lubik)

  
  

• Staff will further cross-reference the federal and provincial commemorative lighting dates and come back to Council with any additional proposed dates. (Opposed: Cllr. Lurbiecki)

  
  

• Council to repeal Corporate Policy – 01-0630-2016-01 – Proclamations. (Opposed: Cllr. Lurbiecki)

The final policy returned to Council on June 24, 2025 and we voted on staff's final recommendation to amend the Council Procedural Bylaw to require a 2/3 vote of Council to add non-jurisdictional items/delegations to Regular Council agendas going forward. (OPPOSED: Councilors Lurbiecki and Lubik )

The "too long, didn't read" version y is that on June 24, 2025, Council approved changes to the previous non-jurisdictional policy in the following ways:

• Moved the discussion of non-jurisdictional items/delegations into the Council Procedural Bylaw to better align with our neighboring communities (cancelled the standalone policy)

• Changed the wording so that the issue is now known as "extra-jurisdictional"

• Amended the procedure so that instead of requiring a simple majority to place an extra-jurisdictional item/delegation on the regular Council agenda, Council now requires approval by 2/3 of voting members   

The definition of extra-jurisdictional remains the same, and the City Manager/staff still decide which items they deem as extra-jurisdictional. City staff will continue to bring those items to Council in closed for discussion and voting. 

Items are defeated when there is a tie vote (i.e. a member is absent), so this small change means adding these items now requires a true majority (and therefore better reflect Council’s will) and should help us stick to City issues in the future.