http://www.torontosun.com/2015/04/02/tory-scolds-councillors-tardiness
TORONTO - He’s a little bit mayor and a little bit hall monitor.
John Tory urged councillors Thursday to actually show up on time for meetings at City Hall.
“It says that the meeting starts at 9:30 a.m. and I guess some practice has developed whereby we wait 15 minutes for people to come here and form a quorum,” the mayor told council at the start of Day 3 of this month’s council meeting.
“I would have thought we could do better than to have a quorum at 9:45 a.m. and sometimes we scrape that up, people come after that. I’d like you to sort of see if we could change our practice in that regard and start at 9:30 a.m. and have a quorum here at 9:30 a.m.”
He then told councillors that if they didn’t finish the agenda on Thursday then they should come back on Monday. City Hall is closed on the Monday following Easter Sunday because it is a holiday for city staff.
“Most other people are working that day,” Tory told council. “If we don’t get our business done (Thursday), we should come back here Monday.”
Hours after Tory’s Easter warning, council ended up wrapping up its agenda Thursday evening.
Tory told reporters he was “serious” about meetings starting on time at 9:30 a.m. and about working on Easter Monday.
“I knew it was a holiday when I said that — that was the point,” Tory said.
“Everybody else is working that day in the city pretty much and if we didn’t finish our business because we couldn’t be productive enough to finish in three days, then come back on Monday and give up the holiday.”
Since coming to City Hall last December, Tory has been trying to make the council chamber less of what he calls an “unproductive environment.”
“I thought (Wednesday) was an example where there were probably four or five hours just wasted on stuff that was sort of interesting maybe to a few people but it really wasn’t advancing the public interest,” Tory said.
Speaker Frances Nunziata urged councillors to show up promptly for council and committee meetings.
“If everyone counts on others to make quorum then no one hurries,” Nunziata told council.