By Thia James

Mayor promises more transparency with fewer meetings

Dec 9, 2014 | 10:24 AM

Prince Albert will be reducing the number of council meetings held in 2015, but the city’s mayor promises the changes to the meeting structure will mean greater transparency.

As of Feb. 1, 2015, council will be meeting once every three weeks, and the format of executive committee meetings will be changing as well. Under the new structure, bylaw amendments would go directly to council meetings without being debated in executive committee meetings.

Public presentations will be moved to the executive committee meetings, and the committee will discuss policy and bylaw proposals. Additionally, it will look at correspondence that it could refer to administration for further review.

Council approved the changes at Monday evening’s meeting.

Mayor Greg Dionne said the executive meetings have been short in the past because the committee hasn’t been approving anything, and as a result, they weren’t having discussions. In fact, members of the committee were holding over discussions until council meetings.

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“So, what the new structure is going to do is make our meetings longer. They are going to be longer, there’s no getting around that. But they’re going to make it more quality and more efficient. And they’re going to be more transparent and more accountable to the public.”

He said the new structure will improve accountability because the in-camera meeting agendas will shrink even more. He said it will be really hard to get an item onto the in-camera agenda.

In-camera meetings are held behind closed doors, with no public oversight. The subject areas of the items discussed are limited to land, legal and labour.

But he indicated there will be discussions in the future about bringing some labour issues onto the public agenda.

“Strictly because, that’s our biggest demand in our community is when our budgets go up, it’s because of our costs of labour, so, people should know the stresses that we’re under as council during the negotiations. But they don’t. And we need to share that with them.”

With the frequency of meetings changing, there will be six fewer council and executive committee meetings under this new structure. Dionne is welcoming the change.

“But I look at it this way, when they brought that to me, I looked at six – it’s six hours. Look at council the other day. It was 45 minutes. So, really, what are we losing?”

He said that 45-minute meeting will become a three-hour one. He wants more productive meetings that are of a better quality.

“I want us to be able to move the city forward, and I think that with the new structure, it will.”

In a statement released after council passed the changes to the procedure bylaw, city clerk Sherry Person said the old structure was implemented several years ago and served the City well in a lot of ways. However, there were areas the City felt could use improvement.

“By reformatting the meetings and better scrutinizing what items appear on each agenda, I expect meetings to be more focused,” she said in the statement. “There will be a learning curve and adjustment period, but it is my expectation that the organization and the public will be better served by the new structure.”

The City is planning meetings with members of council to familiarize them with the new structure. It’ll also be holding a public meeting at the end of January to explain the changes to residents.

paNOW will be at the information meeting and will delve further into the changes beforehand.

tjames@panow.com

On Twitter: @thiajames