Richmond citizens might soon be able to check online how mayor and city councillors voted on issues.
At a recent committee meeting, council endorsed an online voting record system that would include search, filtering and display features and would be linked to minutes and reports.
In the initial discussion at Monday’s General Purposes committee meeting, Mayor Malcolm Brodie first suggested trying a static system that would just post results in a word-processed document, an spreadsheet or a pdf, and then review it after a year to see how useful it was. This option wouldn’t have allowed for searching or filtering results.
In B.C., only Vancouver and Prince George publish a separate online voting record; the Vancouver one was referenced by council when looking at options from city staff.
Coun. Michael Wolfe put forward the option that included search, filtering and display features that could be linked to minutes and reports.
“(If) we’re competing for Smart Cities to lead the country, then I think we have to go with a smarter voting records system,” he said.
The layout for the option council chose is similar to Vancouver’s system, which Coun. Carol Day called “super user-friendly.”
“You literally click on it and there’s the files,” she said, adding Richmond residents deserve an easy-to-use system that doesn’t require extra effort.
Council’s decisions from the past 19 years are already available to all city staff members through the Council Decisions Database. Staff have been working on making the system available to the public.
The system council is endorsing would build on the current Council Decisions Database at a cost of $10,000. Implementation is estimated for mid 2019.
Larger cities like Vancouver, Toronto and Halifax capture council votes in real time as they vote electronically in council chambers where they have the hardware and software to do so.
Council was discussing the issue in committee on Monday, and it will come back to a council meeting for a final decision.
Currently, a record of how mayor and council voted on items are in meeting minutes, which are posted on the city’s website, a practise the city adopted in the year 2000.
