By Courtney Almeida

New Schedule

City Council approves trial changes to City meetings schedule

May 9, 2019 | 5:30 AM

At a City Council meeting on Monday evening, Council chose to make changes to the way that meetings are conducted. Moving forward, schedule changes will be made on a trial basis for both City Council and City Committee meetings.

“My entire time on council since 2001, we’ve had our committee meetings on Tuesdays. So, each Tuesday, we would have one or two committee meetings and then every second Monday we have our evening council meetings starting at about 6:30 p.m.,” says Mayor Bill Given.

The changes approved by Council would see a move for City Council meetings to take place over two scheduled segments. Segment one would take place on Mondays at 3 p.m. and segment two would be later that same day at 6 p.m.

The Mayor says one idea behind the change is that more staff would be available to support Council during the working day, without the City having to pay overtime to have those staff there.

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Schedule changes serve a dual purpose, as they will also ensure that council meetings do not run as late into the evening.

A change was also approved by Council to the city’s Committee meeting schedule. “Rather than having Committee meetings happening every Tuesday, we have moved to all of our Committee meetings happening on the same Tuesday,” said Given.

Moving forward, City Council will meet twice on a Monday and the following week, all Committee meetings would be held during the day on a Tuesday.

“It’s a pretty significant change for the way we do business here, for City staff, for Council members and for members of the Media but I think generally, for the public— it’s a change that they likely won’t notice.”

One of the things that was a hot topic of discussion for all members of Council at the meeting, was to ensure that there was still a good ability for the public to be involved in decision making and to be able to give their input to Council.

“I’m confident that will exist in this system,” notes Given.

Another concern raised by Council was that the change may result in a potential impact to people who might consider running for City Council.

“Both of those are really valid concerns and I’m glad to see that Council is interested in that. During the meeting, the point that I raised was that I’ve worked in this system for the longest out of anybody on Council and I’m open to trying new things, to see if this is a better system. I would share those concerns that were raised but with a temporary change as we proposed today, I think we’ll have a chance to assess whether or not those end up being positive or negative impacts.”

Schedule changes will carry out on a trial basis as the new calendar of Committee meetings is only approved up until October, when the City sets their new calendar for the year.

“The intention here is to try something different. To see if it improves our efficiency and our turnaround time for dealing with issues and I’m sure that many members of Council will be watching to ensure that it doesn’t decrease the ability for members of the public to be involved.”

In the Fall, if all goes well, Council would then deliberate as to whether the changes should be made permanent in the following year.

Find the full City of Grande Prairie meeting schedule here.