Three-questions not speeding up meetings, councillors say

A new three-question rule at city council isn’t working as intended so far say two councillors opposed to the idea.

The city started its two-month trial Monday limiting councillors to three questions per round in an effort to speed up meetings. But after the first meeting went past 1 a.m. Coun. Andrew Foulds said the experiment didn’t cut down on "grand standing" by some councillors and led to long preambles that lengthen meetings.

"I think if the intent is to shorten meetings Monday night proved that it wasn’t successful," said Foulds.

Foulds said that since it was the first try for council, he thinks it will take time for councillors to get used to the process. The imposed structure of that process may prove difficult though because sometimes an answer leads to another question.

Since the process limits the number of questions per round but not the rounds themselves, Foulds said a councillor may have to wait a long time before asking another question. Foulds said councillors should take the time necessary to make decisions.

"When you have a government and you have important decisions sometimes you need to take time," said Foulds. "Important issues take time and I think we should be spending the of amount of time issues deserve."

Coun. Rebecca Johnson agreed. Johnson said she was frustrated Monday because of the process.

"The dilemma that I’m finding is that as you ask a question then a response comes back and it might lead to another question and in my mind I was trying to figure out how do I do this? Because now I have another question which really doesn’t answer all the questions I originally wanted to have answers to," Johnson said.

Regardless of process, Johnson said politicians are politicians and will get their point across at a meeting. While she and Foulds said it’s too early to tell whether the experiment will be successful, Johnson said Monday was not a good start.

"If it goes the way it did Monday evening I don’t think we’re accomplishing what we set out for," Johnson said.