New Westminster city council isn’t overly keen about adding three additional meeting to its schedule.
On Monday, staff presented a report to council recommending the schedule of meetings be amended to include closed and committee of the whole workshops on June 15, Oct. 26 and Nov. 23. Under the current schedule, council has no meetings schedule on those days.
Coun. Patrick Johnstone sought justification for the meetings, noting that some council members have other jobs.
City clerk Jan Gibson said there are some items that staff need time to review with council. In order to facilitate those discussions, she said staff wanted to ask council to schedule additional meetings on those days.
Lisa Spitale, chief administrative officer, noted that staff are working with council’s instructions to do one workshop a month and is reviewing potential changes to the council meeting structure.
Coun. Lorrie Williams said she’d prefer to have the workshops on the dates proposed by staff rather than extending the duration of already scheduled meetings.
Coun. Bill Harper said he’d like to know how New Westminster city council’s meeting schedules compares to other councils, in terms of the number of meetings.
“We take a pretty big time off in the summer, which I like,” he said “Other councils continue to meet in the summer.”
According to the current schedule, council meets on July 13 and doesn’t meet again until Aug. 31.
Coun. Mary Trentadue suggested council approve the June 15 meeting, and hold off on deciding about the others until it has a better idea of the need for those meetings. Council approved the recommendation.
