Vermilion council is considering the implementation of a committee council for future meetings, similar to Lloydminster’s Governance and Priorities Committee.
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The town previously had a series of independent sub committees with one or two councillors on each. It eventually shifted into a single Finance and Governance meeting, held quarterly with all departments and all of council.
Administration, noting the need for openness and transparency, proposed these finance and governance meetings be transitioned into council of the whole meetings.
The hope is to have these council meetings six times a year, or bi-monthly from 1:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. in council chambers. The time frame of the meetings quickly drew criticism from council.
“It’s a good idea to move them to a public meeting,” said Coun. Kirby Whitlock. “But the 1:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. for the meetings … (I) just don’t think that’s going to work for the public to be engaged in those meetings.”
Whitlock suggested a timeframe in the evening.
“We’d be looking more at a 7 p.m,” he said.
An issue brought up by Coun. Paul Conlon was working the meetings around councillors who work full time.
“It’s a good idea to have these transition to council of the whole meetings,” he said. “Unfortunately, doing them during working hours is difficult for … I’d say the majority of councillors in the past and probably future because most of them work full time.”
CAO Shannon Harrower gave some clarity as to what these meetings would entail.
“Basically, the agenda would look almost similar to the agenda we have now, but it would be a committee meeting agenda instead as a whole,” she said. “The purpose of the committee would be to discuss all the matters coming forward to council at length.”
The committee meetings would be more in depth and offer longer discussions for the various items.
“They’d be a little more lengthy in duration in hopes we would streamline our council meetings and reduce the discussion at council meetings,” said Harrower.
The move to making these meetings public is something that Coun. Robert Snow says should have already been done.
“I think having these public is absolutely essential, they should’ve been public a long time ago,” said Snow, noting he didn’t see the time frame as being an issue.
He followed up asking if the meetings would be livestreamed for the public.
“We’re in the process right now of transitioning our meeting management software to eScribe,” said Harrower. “So, part of that platform allows us to livestream our council meetings. It would be available on YouTube and they’d be subsequently embedded into our website.”
She says the hope is to have the new software launched in September, giving the public the opportunity to view council meetings at their leisure.
Moving the meetings into an evening time slot would then mean administration would be committing to another extra night of work.
“We need to be considerate of administration’s time as well, asking for a third evening or a fourth evening a month turns into a lot when you already have a full-time day-job,” said Deputy Mayor Joshua Rayment. “I definitely don’t mind the timeline, and we can make it work.”
Coun. Robert Pulyk says it’s up to the councillor to work around meeting schedules.
“I think it’s incumbent for the elected officials to plan out their time knowing when the meeting is coming and being able to work around that,” he said.
Harrower noted the meetings would have set timeframes as to not have them run too long.
Council directed administration to provide council with an alternate calendar, which would include a timeframe for council of the whole meetings.
The item is expected to return for decision at a future council meeting.
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