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Not the full picture. Built from public records, which leave things out.Read by hand, Oct 2026DetailsThis is built from public records, which leave a lot out, and some of it may be wrong or out of date. Check the sources, and tell us if you spot a mistake. What this site can't tell you
Read by hand. We read Hearst's own documents for this site in October 2026; the Sources page lists which ones. The comparisons with other places still come from the Province's yearly reports.

Council

Who decides, and how you can hold them to account

Hearst is run by an elected council of 7 people. They set the budget, approve big purchases and hire the senior staff who run the town day to day.

Current council

Names and official email addresses from the town's council page. None of the members lists a public social media account there.

How open is Hearst?

What a resident can find online without asking, as of October 7, 2026.

  • Yes
    Budgets posted online

    The Finance page links the 2026, 2025 and 2024 operating and capital budgets as PDFs. The 2026 file is dated April 10, 2026 on its pages and shows two budget versions side by side. Source

  • Partly
    Audited financial statements

    The only audited statements we found on the Finance page are for 2022 (auditor's report dated September 19, 2023). We did not find 2023, 2024 or 2025. Source

  • No
    Council pay and expenses (s. 284)

    We did not find a yearly statement of council pay and expenses on the Town's website pages we read. It may be on the meeting portal, which we could not read (see below). Source

  • Unknown
    Meeting agendas and minutes

    The Town's own archive page of meeting documents stops at April 2018. Current meetings are linked to a CivicWeb portal. That portal's robots.txt disallows every path for all crawlers, so we did not read it and read no minutes. Source

  • Yes
    Candidates' 2022 election financial statements

    The Town posts the 2022 candidate financial statements as PDFs. We did not read them. Source

How to raise a concern

From the gentlest step to the most serious. Start at the top.

  1. Code of ethics

    The Town has a Code of Ethics page under its council policies. We did not read it, and we did not find any Integrity Commissioner or closed meeting investigator reports on the pages we read.