The Town of Tecumseh is being asked to consider a policy to deal with baseless, unreasonable, or frivolous complaints.
Town council received a report at its July 28 meeting detailing that while most complaints received by the town are submitted in good faith, there have been and continue to be ongoing instances where complaints become repetitive, frivolous, or otherwise unreasonable in nature and are placing an unreasonable strain on municipal time and resources.
Tecumseh Mayor Gary McNamara says the proposed policy is quite a large file, and council wanted to take a better look at it before discussing it.
“It’s multiple articles in that by-law for everybody to be able to digest it, so we’re going to hold off until the next meeting,” he says.
The report says that by-law enforcement staff have reported that an increasingly disproportionate amount of town time and resources are being spent on complaints that may be considered frivolous or unreasonable, which limits staff’s ability to respond to and manage other essential matters.
The goal of the proposed policy is to develop a transparent and consistent process for identifying, reviewing, and managing such complaints where warranted while maintaining the public’s ability to access municipal services and raise legitimate concerns.
McNamara says the administration has been getting a lot of requests, but it’s the same request when people don’t like the answer.
“It’s been taking a lot of effort and time, certainly, for administration to be able to deal with these issues and so forth. We’re trying to bring a policy to curb some of the repetitive questions,” he says.
McNamara says the policy is to help take some of the pressure off town staff.
“There are policies to protect the greater good of the municipality. I get it; there are issues that might, on a personal level, that people might not like. Everybody has to look at the bigger picture and the greater good of the municipality, and this is what we’re trying to do,” he says.
The proposed policy would establish a framework for addressing complaints intended to abuse, intimidate, harass, manipulate, or otherwise misuse the town’s complaint process.
It proposes that anyone who submits three or more complaints regarding the same subject matter, property, or individual within a rolling twelve-month period, where investigations resulted in no new findings or no contravention, could have a series of measures taken to put restrictions on any future contact with town staff and potentially services.
The issue will return to town council on August 11.