Yorkton Council made a decision at their last regular meeting to make a rather significant change to how they will go about their regular business moving forward.
Meetings will be held every three weeks moving forward in 2017, rather than every two weeks which has been the norm for a number of years. The recommendation for change came from Administration.
“Regular meetings of Council have for numerous years been scheduled for the 2nd and 4th Mondays of the month, unless the date would fall on a statutory holiday, in which case the meeting would be scheduled for the following week, resulting in a three-week separation,” explained Kathy Ritchie – Director of Legislation and Procedures (City Clerk) at the meeting.
And of course, Councils have chosen over the years to allow themselves and Administration to enjoy the summer with a single meeting in July and another lone date in August, a pattern generally repeated again in December, again related to the holidays of the month.
So history suggests Council can function quite well without a meeting every two weeks.
In fact, having streamlined the processes many meetings of late have been rather short.
Those functions include:
• Established legislation, bylaws and policies, dictating decisions that Administration shall implement and thus those issues no longer needing to go to Council.
• Appeal Boards have been created to deal with appeals which used to come before Council (legislated authority).
So the business of the City will carry on quite nicely with an open meeting every three weeks.
But that does not mean there will not be some serious adapting which needs to be done, including by the public.
To begin with anyone needing Council approvals will have to adjust their timelines to incorporate the extended schedule. That can be from the straightforward proclamations of certain weeks in the city, (such as Veterans Week), to those seeking specific approval for a host of things which require the Council’s nod to move forward.
As for stepping in to Council to listen, again, the public will need to adjust, but it gets more complicated than remembering it is now a three-week cycle.
When a meeting falls on a Stat holiday it no longer gets pushed to the following week. Instead it just bumps to Tuesday.
The change will essentially create a situation where the public will have to check the city website (www.yorkton.ca), in order to know when meetings are. That is not necessarily a bad thing, but it is a reality the public will need to adapt to.
