Photo by Curtis Galbraith.

By Curtis Galbraith

City Hall

New rules on future virtual meeting attendance now in place for city council

Jun 7, 2021 | 5:30 AM

After lengthy discussions at the last two meetings, city council has approved its updated Procedure Bylaw.

Council ended up approving a change that would limit remote attendance at a maximum of six committee days and six council meetings per year, post pandemic.

Mayor Jackie Clayton says meetings have changed a lot during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“In the past, our bylaw allowed councillors to call in for one topic at a meeting virtually. Now, as we’ve transitioned through COVID and having meetings virtually, organizations such as ourselves can see the opportunity of utilizing virtual meetings so that you can have a larger participation as much as possible.”

She adds it was important that the change say ‘committee days’ rather than ‘committee meetings.’

“Council’s commitment to workload can change. Some councillors have two committees, and some councillors have one. If you miss one day at home because your child was sick, and you were on two committees, that could count as two of your six that you are allowed to miss.”

An idea to allow councillors to go over that limit, with the mayor’s permission if the councillor was away on city business, was rejected.

Clayton says this idea came from a discussion around what qualifies as an allowable reason to miss a meeting.

“If you’re on a committee, representing the City of Grande Prairie, that work is very important. But you can’t be everywhere so sometimes you may miss council work and sometimes you may miss committee work and (this change is) trying to find a common balance that works for our out-of-council commitments, as well as still being present at the table for all the expected work that you do with council.”

Clayton says councillors skipping meetings without a reason has not been a problem before and does not expect it to be in the future.