By Chad Ingram

The following are brief reports of items discussed during a June 10 online meeting of Minden Hills council.

The township is preparing for the replacement of the Sedgwick Road bridge, which is scheduled to commence in early August and be completed by late November.
The bridge is scheduled to be closed to vehicular and pedestrian traffic starting Aug. 16, and Haliburton County council has approved the use of the Haliburton County Rail Trail as a detour for local residents. Bird netting was installed on the bridge this spring to prevent barn swallows from nesting on the structure. The cost of the project is approximately $1.05 million, with funding coming from the federal and provincial governments, as well as the township.

Meetings will continue to be live-streamed
Councillors passed a bylaw that will permit council meetings to continue to be publicly live-streamed once council again begins meeting in person, whenever that might take place.
Throughout most of the COVID-19 pandemic, meetings have been held electronically, with councillors participating remotely from home via online conferencing platform Zoom, with proceedings broadcast to the public on YouTube. Electronic participation in council meetings, prohibited by the Municipal Act, has been permitted in Ontario during the pandemic as a result of special emergency legislation passed by the provincial governments.
Councillor Bob Carter said he’d like to see terms of reference that clearly prohibit commercial or malicious use of the videos.