Cleaning up meetings

The city wants to make meetings run more smoothly.

City clerk John Hannam said city council and administration aren’t necessarily looking for ways to shorten meetings – which averaged more than five-hours last year – but make them more efficient.

The city has been concerned for some time about the conduct of meetings from relevant questions from councillors to the length of presentations from staff members.

"A whole mixed bag of issues were beginning to contribute to meetings that didn’t seem to be as efficient or effective as they might be and so there was a collective realization that we needed to sit down and work through some of those issues and see if we could find some solutions," Hannam said.

Staff and council sat down in a closed session a few weeks ago to go over the city’s procedural rules for city council, planning, public and committee of the whole meetings.

"It’s up to council to use that framework to their best advantage. I think in some cases it’s a 50/50 arrangement. The rules need to be properly structured but at the same time councillors need to properly prepare and also understand the rules and also throughout the meeting be aware of what else is going on in terms of questioning so that there isn’t repetitive questioning.”

How efficient a meeting is also depends on the chair.

Making definitions clear for city meetings will help councillors who chair those meetings understand and interpret the rules of order better.

As for meeting length, Hannam said that all depends on what’s before council on a given night.

"Part of it is issue driven," Hannam said. "But overall it’s not so much that the meetings are too long. It’s ‘are we managing the meeting well?’

“Whether it’s a one-hour or a five-hour meeting, has it been managed well? And has council stayed focused on the issues? Have the questions been on point? Has administration done their job in presenting an informative report and tight presentation?"

Understanding the city’s rules for its four types of meetings is not the easiest thing to do, Hannam admits.

So the city is also trying to bundle the committee, city council, public and planning meeting procedures into one easy-to-read package.

"Procedural rules are not very exciting and to sit down and read a package of procedural rules can put you to sleep in a hurry," Hannam said.

"So hitting some of the key ones in a different approach perhaps gets them understood a little better by everyone involved."