Sault mayor apologizes for ‘complete gong show’ council meeting

City hall workers were scrambling Tuesday to fix audio problems that turned this week’s city council meeting into what Mayor Matthew Shoemaker says was a “gong show.”

“City staff have been working with our audiovisual service provider, DesignElectronics, throughout the day today to investigate the issues that affected last night’s council meeting,” Tessa Vecchio, the city’s corporate communications officer, tells SooToday.

“Once that review is complete, we expect to have a clearer understanding of what went wrong and what corrective measures are required,” Vecchio said.

The city’s IT staff wrestled with major audio quality and remote connections on Monday night, beginning with presentations from executives of Toronto-based Protexxa Inc., who were seeking municipal support for a proposed artificial intelligence/cybersecurity data centre on Yates Avenue.

The Protexxa people got what they were looking for, but only after an embarrassing 22-minute delay during which their executives could be clearly heard on the city’s YouTube stream, but couldn’t be heard by city councillors in the council chambers.

After the long wait, Shoemaker announced an ‘analog’ solution, apparently involving a voice-only phone call.

“Ironically, on an agenda item about an IT servicing centre, we are having all kinds of problems with IT,” the mayor said.

Connectivity wasn’t the only problem.

SooToday has approached city staff after recent council meetings, asking them to address quality issues during city council livestreams, which are the official record of council debates. 

In addition to the problems with remote connections, the livestream quality also reached a new low on Monday, making it close to impossible for members of the public to understand what was being said.

“Wanted to apologize for how terrible the sound and IT was last night,” Shoemaker told SooToday late this afternoon. 

“We’re working with a dinosaur of a system that needs an upgrade, and it failed us last night.

“We are going to try to ensure it doesn’t happen again until we can get it fully replaced.

“Apologies again. I was as frustrated as you with the complete gong show last night proved to be,” the mayor said.

The audio gremlins also struck during an unsuccessful attempt on Monday by Northern Ontario Capacity (NCO), a Canadian company that wanted preliminary municipal support for its $75-million proposal for three local natural gas plants. 

At one point, an NCO representative, visibly frustrated by the audio problems and seemingly unaware he could be heard on the council livestream, exclaimed: “damn!”