SEPTEMBER 21 SPECIAL COUNCIL MEETING How Does the Public Know What's Happening — and When? And How Does That Compare With the Two September 24 Meetings? Part 2

September 23rd, 2026

I believe transparency and accessibility are fundamental to good municipal government. Government is a public servant. It acts on behalf of residents and taxpayers and holds a responsibility to earn and maintain the public's trust. Residents shouldn't have to be experts, spend hours searching for information, or simply happen to be looking in the right place at the right time to know what their municipal government is doing.

I've been looking at the timelines surrounding the September 21st Special Council meeting and the two meetings taking place on September 24th.

I think the timeline is worth sharing because public participation starts with one very basic thing: Knowing that a meeting is happening.

Here is what I found.

	Sept. 21 Special Council Meeting	Sept. 24 Destination Wasaga Meeting	Sept. 24 Council Meeting
Meeting date	Sept. 21 12:30 pm	Sept. 24 7 pm	Sept. 24 10 am
Notice	Special Council meeting filed on the Town's website on September 18th - no Facebook announcement	Public meeting announced September 9th on Facebook & the Town's website and continuousy since then	Council meeting advertised on September 22nd on the Town's website & Facebook & by some Councillors
Advance notice	Approximately 3 days from the notice deadline to the meeting - including Saturday & Sunday - not considered "business hours" for most government offices	15 days Note to Reader: The September 24th meeting was publicly announced at the August 27th Town Hall Meeting	More advance public visibility using Facebook
Facebook	No Facebook notice identified	Facebook notice	Facebook notice
Public participation	Delegation deadline was Sept. 20 at 3:59 p.m.	Public meeting announced well in advance	Regular Council meeting
Question	What was different about this meeting?

The Facebook question

I'm going to include screenshots of the Town's Facebook posts advertising:

1. The September 24 Destination Wasaga meeting - advertised on Facebook since September 9th which appears to have been posted on at least 7 separate occasions on the Town's Facebook page

And the Town's Facebook page has a banner that is about the Destination Wasaga Meeting

2. The September 24 Council meeting advertised on Facebook since September 22nd

And then I want to ask a very simple question:

If the Town was able to use Facebook to give notice to the public of the two September 24th meetings, what was different about the September 21 Special Council meeting that Facebook was not used to disseminate information about it?

I'm not saying Facebook is legally required.

I'm asking about consistency and accessibility.

If social media is an effective way to reach residents about Council meetings, shouldn't we ask whether it should be used consistently?

Something else I discovered

Because I have worked with technology for a long time, I was always taught to check the Document Properties of a file.

Sometimes they contain useful information that isn't immediately visible in the document itself — such when a document was created, or when it was last revised.

So I checked the Document Properties for the September 21 Special Council meeting agenda.

There was also additional material filed in respect of the September 21 Special Council meeting. I checked the Document Properties for that material as well.

In Ontario, the government defines a business day as any official calendar day that is not a Saturday, a Sunday, or a public/statutory holiday. As a taxpayer, I did not anticipate that the Town would be counting Saturday and Sunday as part of the time limit required to file a request to speak at a Council meeting.

This raises another question:

When was the agenda — and the additional material — actually made available to the public?

That's important when we're talking about how much practical notice residents had about a Special Council meeting.

And here's a possible solution

Rather than expecting residents to constantly check the Town's website, why couldn't technology make this easier?

Could the Town create an opt-in notification system where taxpayers and residents could choose to receive an email or text whenever any type of Council meeting is posted to the Town's website?

For example:

• Regular Council meetings

• Special Council meetings

• Committee meetings

• Public meetings

• Agendas

• Other Council-related notices

Since June 1st, I've received 19 text messages from the Town on different topics: Destination Wasaga, aerial transportation opportunities, the "Ask Staff Anything" video series, "Beach Life" festival, investments in Wasaga Beach, Piping Plovers, to name a few.

The information could come to the resident, rather than requiring the resident to remember to go looking for it.

My question isn't complicated:

How can we use technology to make municipal government easier for residents to follow and participate in?

Because public participation begins with something very simple: People need to know what's happening before they can participate.

Thanks for listening!