Letter to Niagara Regional Council against making rules for delegating more difficult

 Dear Councillors,

The current procedural rules already make it very difficult if not impossible to delegate effectively because by needing to submit a delegation by the Friday morning before a Regional Council meeting we don't know of key developments happening before we can submit our delegation. Key committee meetings, reports, and proposals may not happen until closer to the Regional Council meeting on the Thursday after the deadline to submit a delegation.

The new rule changes from the Procedural By-law Review Committee amending Section 13.5 make delegating more difficult by moving the deadline for delegating in extenuating circumstances further back two days. If it's an extenuating circumstance we might not know until the afternoon of the meeting.

There should be a normal, not extenuating, opportunity for people to request delegating to Council up to and including the afternoon of the Council and Committee meetings so that we don't have to play guessing games of what will happen in the days before the meeting to figure out what our delegation content will be. Normalizing delegation requests closer to the meetings help make delegations better informed and prepared when requesting to speak to Council.

Thank you,

Saleh Waziruddin in St. Catharines