You can fight city hall, but city hall is saying it may fight back if it deems that fight to be frivolous.
With that in mind, Deep River council gave the green light last week for the development of a policy dealing with “frivolous, vexatious and unreasonable” requests made of the municipality.
Development of that policy, which is expected to be presented by town staff early next year, follows on the heels of a resolution passed by council earlier this year.
That resolution called on staff to prepare a report on all costs related to responding to legislated complaint processes over the last 10 years, including but not limited to the town’s integrity commissioner, Ontario’s Ombudsman, freedom of information requests “and other bodies that have a legislated complaint process to which the municipality must adhere.”
The resolution also called for the report to detail all revenues related to those requests, and to include “any potential mitigation strategies” to minimize legal and staff time costs “while continuing to fulfill our legal obligations for a fair and open process to all taxpayers.”
That report, which was on last week’s council agenda, shows the town dealt with 37 applications related to legislated complaint processes over the last 10 years, costing the municipality an estimated $325,000.
That figure is broken down into $195,000 for legal costs and $130,000 for the 2,000 hours of staff time in dealing with the applications.
Revenues associated with the requests totalled $7,500.
Of the 37 applications, meanwhile, just two were found to have any merit.
The staff time spent dealing with those two applications was 10 hours and there were no legal fees incurred.
The report also notes that, of the 37 applications, approximately half of them came from “one source.”
“The historical data clearly demonstrates that significant resources are required to comply with the considered legislation,” the report to council states.
“It also highlights a clear trend that the vast majority of these applications are without merit. In staff’s opinion, many of them are frivolous and/or vexatious.
“A policy to identify a person that is making numerous un-merited, frivolous or vexatious applications on a regular basis will mitigate the negative impact of the considered legislation that is designed to protect the public.”
The report goes on to state that the town “recognizes the importance of public input, and understands and appreciates that complaints are a valuable form of feedback (and) an effective tool for implementing or strengthening processes in support of the town’s dedication to serving the community.”
However, the report says, the town would be “remiss in its duty to taxpayers” by not also recognizing that “frivolous, vexatious or unreasonable requests place an added unnecessary financial burden on taxpayers, and an operational burden on staff that consumes a disproportionate amount of time and resources, and impedes staff from attending to other essential customer needs.”
The draft policy dealing with frivolous, vexatious and unreasonable requests will include a fee structure “to mitigate the significant costs associated with these types of complaints.”
“It’s critical to note that much of the considered legislation does not provide an avenue or recourse for the municipality to recoup the cost of resources, even when the application is found to have no merit,” the report states.
“One application in particular that had to be defended found that the applicant had no standing to make the application and the subject matter was not within that legislated jurisdiction.
“The legal costs of this particular application were over $11,000, and significant staff time was spent responding to it.”
The report noted that there is also a “significant workload” associated with “repetitive interactions with member(s) of the public which do not utilize any legislated processes but are without merit and/or are abusive in nature.”
“These also consume significant resources to deal with and often contribute to a toxic environment for staff, council and at times member(s) of the public.”
Creating a policy will “provide staff and council with a tool to mitigate the negative impact that frivolous, vexatious and unreasonable applications have on our community,” the report added.
“It will help to provide members of council, staff, and the public with a respectful, tolerant and harassment free environment.”
Town staff took pains at last week’s meeting not to delve into examples of specific complaints contained in the report as “it may point fingers at specific people, which we have to ensure we don’t do,” according to the town’s chief administrative officer, Sean Patterson.
Reeve Glenn Doncaster, however, took umbrage with the need for privacy.
“This isn’t private,” the reeve argued.
“This was in the North Renfrew Times, so I’m going to be careful to not say anything, but in this report more than 50 percent of these complaints are coming from one person, and we all know who it is. And anybody who’s watching this knows who it is.”
“It needs to stop,” Doncaster went on to say.
“All it’s doing is it’s just a distraction for this council and, more importantly, it’s a distraction for staff that they have to spend hours and hours and hours to provide information.”
Doncaster also said it’s important for council to understand the costs associated with dealing complaints over the last 10 years.
“I would have rather spent that $325,000 on playgrounds instead of it going to lawyers and integrity commissioners and whoever.”
Councillor Terry Myers was supportive of the need to have a policy in place, but said council also needs to consider the “public interest” by making sure the policy has an appeal process.
Myers also cautioned that council should maintain a hands-off approach to the policy once it’s enacted, and that it left be left to staff instead to deal with such matters.
“My issue with it coming to council is (that) it becomes a political issue,” Myers said.
“I don’t want that to be part of it. Once we establish a policy it should be a policy staff can implement.”
Myers did agree with Doncaster that the $325,000 associated with dealing with complaints over the past decade could have been better spent.
“Almost $200,000 of that is legal costs,” he said.
“That’s money going out the door to pay lawyers. It’s ridiculous that we spend that much money on this kind of stuff.”
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