It seems Deep River council will hit the pause button on plans for a “frivolous, vexatious, or unreasonable requests” policy.
Council will receive a report tonight suggesting the town defer the policy to provide more time to “monitor the evolution, implementation and ultimately the performance of provincial programs to deal with these issues.”
“The problem of vexatious complainants has hindered the administration of many municipalities in Ontario for decades,” says a staff report by municipal clerk Jackie Mellon and CAO Sean Patterson.
“It is widely recognized that frivolous and vexatious complaints clog the system, waste time, and critically, deny others timely access to processes by so doing.”
At the same time, they say, organizations like the Association of Municipalities of Ontario and Association of Municipal Clerks & Treasurers of Ontario have been lobbying the provincial government to take steps to “improve performance related to these types of complaints.”
The draft resolution before council says that provincial legislation has been introduced with “significant changes” to things like codes of conduct and the integrity commissioner process.
Regulations are also “evolving” to address the “challenges posed by frivolous and vexatious” complaints with an aim to “streamline the process and provide clearer guidelines for handling such cases.”
Rather than moving forward with the policy, staff are suggesting the issue be put on hold “to ensure council have the ability to review program performance in other municipalities and to ensure that anticipated changes to provincial legislation are captured in our policy”…
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