The Town of Battleford is looking at resuming live council meetings starting next month.
At Monday’s meeting, Mayor Ames Leslie said the town was considering holding a “full-fledged in-person council meeting as a trial” next month, prior to resuming their two-meetings-per-month schedule in the fall.
The plan is to hold the meeting at Alex Dillabough Centre on Aug 17. The large venue is considered suitable to accommodate the gathering and social distancing requirements still in place.
The province has allowed gatherings of upwards of 30 people to resume indoors as part of Phase Four Part Two of their Re-Open Saskatchewan plan. The meeting at Alex Dillabough Centre would be open to the public to attend, provided that gathering restriction is met.
Up until now, council had been meeting remotely via the Microsoft Teams platform. A limited number of officials including the mayor, director of finance and some council members would normally be in attendance at Town Hall, while other town officials and councillors participated using video-conferencing technology.
Alex Dillabough Centre had previously hosted a council meeting in mid-March just as the provincial pandemic restrictions were imposed, but the town switched afterwards to virtual meetings using Microsoft Teams.
More details are expected closer to Aug. 17 on whether the live meeting will indeed go ahead as planned, or whether it will once again be a virtual meeting as before.
