Discussion became heated at times around the Collingwood Council Table as some former town committees were dissolved or consolidated as a part of committee restructuring.

Council voted in favour of dissolving the Affordable Housing Task Force, Sustainability Advisory Committee, Human Resource Committee, Sign Variance and Advisory Committee and Physician Retention and Attraction Committee.

The report was presented to council by Clerk Sara Almas. It stated that by consolidating various committees and by having municipal involvement in external boards/committees, the town will be able to focus on recruitment to the core advisory committees and boards and ensuring they have the mandate and resources necessary to gather input and make informed recommendations for Council's consideration. Public meetings will be held for Council to make decisions on larger matters to ensure all stakeholders and the public have the opportunity to be heard directly by Council.

The new structure will permit Advisory Committees to establish their own subcommittees, task forces, and focus groups to be referred to for general purposes as "subgroups". Once the committees/boards are established they can determine a consistent monthly meeting schedule, the chairs will consult with the staff liason to prepare the agendas, the minutes will be a record of the matters discussed and the decision, records of the sub-groups will be informal notes, all members will receive formal instruction on procedure and conflict of interest, in-camera minutes of committees/boards are recorded and provided to Council.

Councillor Ian Chadwick was quick to express his displeasure with the proposed changes. "I have quite a few comments to make about this. I'm very unhappy with it. Were these recommended changes discussed with the committees, especially those recommended for dissolution. Where they told they were going to be dissolved?"

Town of Collingwood CAO Kim Wingrove responded by stating that individual discussions had been held with some of the committees, but not all of them. "We did not for example bring back members of the parking committee that hasn't met for some time to discuss this with them, but certainly I had some discussions with representatives of both Sustainability and with Affordable Housing. The purpose of my discussions with those groups was to better understand what their experience had been in serving on those committes, whether they felt that they were being as well supported as they might be, whether or not they felt that the committees as they are presently structured was effective and an efficient use of their time and others." Wingrove said that she has used the time to have a discussion with them and based on the feedback from the representatives, the staff report was created for council's consideration.

Councillor Chadwick went on to say that he wasn't happy with the process. "I see this as a backwards way of doing things. We're telling the public how we're going to do things, we haven't asked them. We haven't asked the people who are involved in the community. We haven't asked the people who were involved in the committees. Committees and boards are the heart and soul of what we do as council. They're how we get in touch with people, they're how we develop policy, they're how we develop strategy." Chadwick said some of the best and brightest members of the community get involved because they want to be part of the community and contribute, but they don't want to become a part of the political arena. "I think we're doing them a disservice by turning around and telling them that we're going to dissolve these committees that they've been sitting on and contributing to without having the courtesy of telling that that we're thinking of doing this first."

Chadwick's motion to defer the committee changes was defeated.