As of 3:30PM on March 13th, this is the first part of developing coverage of a series of emergency council meetings. Please see the tags at the end of this article for more details. 

Peterborough City Council struggled to reach quorum during what were supposed to be emergency meetings of general committee and city council on March 13th. 

With a closed session allegedly to start at 12:30 PM, the slew of meetings were to address an item regarding a "facility use matter." Then, council was to hold an open session general committee meeting to consider the closed session report on the facility use matter at 1:00PM, then ratify it during a city council meeting starting ten minutes later. 

This did not happen.

A quorum for council meetings under the Procedural By-law is a “majority” of council members. Only five out of 11 council members were present: Mayor Jeff Leal, councillors Gary Baldwin, Dave Haacke, Kevin Dugauy attended in person, and Lesley Parnell via Microsoft Teams. 

For more than 30 minutes, City staff attempted to reach various councillors, with calls bouncing to voicemail every five or so minutes. Eventually, they reached Councillor Parnell, but in the meantime, Mayor Leal and councillors Dugauy, Baldwin, and Haacke had left their seats to chat idly. 

At 1:38 PM, City Clerk John Kennedy alerted attendees that quorum could not be met according to the City’s procedural by-law and suggested the meeting be adjourned. 

“Then it’s adjourned!” Mayor Leal exclaimed. 

At 1:39 PM, Kennedy started saying “hot mic” repeatedly until the stream shut off ten seconds later.