THUNDER BAY – Changes are coming for city council next week, as its regular meetings are moving from Monday to Tuesday evenings.
Starting on Sept. 2, council and staff will have their first meeting under a new procedural bylaw that moves away from the committee of the whole structure and replaces it with standing committees.
Director of legislative services, Krista Power told Newswatch that administrative staff are prepared for the new governance changes.
“We've been spending a ton of time in the background getting everything ready for city council meetings to look a little bit different,” Power said.
Coun. Kasey Etreni said she hopes that the public “bears with us” as they adapt to the new changes.
“It's going to be a bit of a learning curve, but I'm looking forward to this,” Etreni said.
Power is doing some training with council before the Sept. 2 meeting to “make sure that they feel comfortable” with the governance changes.
“We're also doing some one-on-one training with members that are taking on new roles. There are some members who haven't been in a chair position before or vice chair position. We want to make sure they feel prepared and supported,” Power said.
Etreni said she is “really optimistic.”
She is looking forward to seeing how the governance model shapes out over the next six months. Then the city will review the new model and decide to stick with it or revert to the committee of the whole model.
Coun. Brian Hamilton said the most important thing for him is that the potential of having “smaller, more efficient meetings” may allow the public to better engage with how their city is run.
“I think the smaller committees will really speak to efficiencies and be a really great way to share information. Ultimately, the recommendations that come out of those standing committees are now going to be a little bit more polished,” Hamilton said.
“I've been running it for the last seven years on the committee of the whole, and I'm kind of getting used to that. We need to engage the public as much as we can. I think if this model can do that, I'm all for it.”
Power said the purpose of these changes is to have more efficient meetings and provide the public with an easier understanding of how our local government works.
Standing committees essentially work the same as a committee of the whole but with a few significant changes, such as changing the amount of time a council can speak on a topic of discussion and reducing the size of council from 13 to five – four councillors and the mayor on each standing committee.
“We've had a lot of conversations with this term of council and a previous term of council about continuous improvement, and there's no mechanism that we can use at this point to track the success of democracy. So, if a meeting lasts five hours, if there are five motions or 15 motions, is that more or less successful? It's really hard to gauge,” Power said.
She said one of the ways to gauge success in a council meeting is “the people's involvement in it and the public access to it.”
“One of the things we've done is actually build in principles of an efficient meeting that they've committed to within their bylaw, which speaks to the timeliness, the ability to speak to be heard, members to be respectful, all of those sorts of pieces,” Power said.
She also mentioned that public feedback from the council composition review fed into the new governance changes, as members voiced their frustration with long council meetings and the overall size of council.
“So, this is an aim to try to achieve that for them,” Power said.
She also noted that both standing committees and council meetings will still be televised on Tbaytel and Rogers TV.
Council is also live-streamed on the city’s website, where “if there's a specific issue they're interested in, they can actually go to the website after the meeting and only watch that section, so they don't have to watch the whole meeting if they don't want to put in the time,” Power said.
The finance and administration standing committees will begin at 4:30 p.m. on Sept 9.
On Sept. 23, the quality of life and growth standing committee will be back-to-back, with quality of life starting at 4:30 p.m. and growth starting a 7 p.m.
Each standing committee will have a two and a half hour time limit.
Those sitting on each committee will provide feedback in three areas to city staff, who will finalize their administrative reports for the regular city council meeting.
City council will start at 6:30 p.m. All 13 council members will be present at the council meeting to give their final approval to the bylaw presented at the time.
“City council makes decisions that affect residents every day. They approve a policy that guides how we make decisions on the removal of garbage, recycling, what programs and services are offered at recreational facilities, and at what cost to the public,” Power said.
“All decisions continue to be made via bylaw as required under the Municipal Act. The public will see changes to the city's website with information on how they can request deputations to the standing committee, share their views with council at ward meetings, public events, or via the public meeting portion of each city council meeting, where applications are received under the Planning Act.”
