Five returning and two new members of New Westminster city council will be sworn in at the inaugural meeting on Nov. 5.
Following the inaugural meeting, council has three more regular meetings scheduled in 2018 – Nov. 19, Dec. 3 and Dec. 10.
Prior to the Oct. 20 election, council received a staff report containing a proposed schedule of regular council meetings in 2019 and debated whether it should schedule more meetings from the get-go or add them if more meetings are needed.
All totalled, council will have 20 regular council meetings and eight public hearings. Council will have regular meetings twice a month for most months in 2019, but only one meeting is scheduled for March, July, August and December.
“There is actually fewer meetings than we had this year,” said Coun. Patrick Johnstone. “A couple times this year we got into a situation where we had really challenging agendas. We had these 35-item agendas that didn’t really give us a great opportunity to have really fulsome discussion on some of the topics where we could have had more fulsome discussions on if we weren’t buried in a very long list of topics on the same night.”
While it’s very “resource intensive” for staff to plan and attend council meetings, Johnstone questioned if more meetings should be scheduled – particularly afternoon workshops where council has had a chance to dig into bigger topics like cannabis regulations and the Queen’s Park heritage conservation area.
Coun. Mary Trentadue agreed there were meetings this year that were jam-packed because there were 35-plus items on an agenda and said it would be worthwhile to have a more fulsome discussion about the schedule. Trentadue, however, expressed concern that every time council meets, whether it’s through its council, task force or committee meetings, it always generates more work for staff.
“I am open to it but I would like to get more feedback from staff as to how the scheduling of these meetings impacts the work and how all the other meetings that go on also impact the work because I think they are all related,” she said.
Coun. Chuck Puchmayr said he was a bit concerned when council reduced its meeting schedule, but thinks it’s gone well. When extra meetings were required, he said they were added to the schedule.
“There is a lot that happens behind the scenes. It is not just council meetings. There is committee meetings. It’s out in the community working with community or helping someone through an issue,” he said. “It’s nice to have some of those weeks freed up to do that kind of work which is all part of our mandate as well. I would be happy giving this a shot.”
Coun. Jaime McEvoy said he’d like to see the city schedule council meetings upfront and remove them from the schedule if they’re not needed.
“There’s a lot of Mondays where we have had to add things to the schedule,” he said. “I’d rather just recognize that workload upfront.”
Mayor Jonathan Cote suggested council approve the proposed schedule, but also direct staff to incorporate more dates for council workshops and strategic planning sessions.
“With a new council, there is going to have to be time set aside for strategic planning,” he said. “We need to make sure we are finding space for that.”
In the Oct. 20 civic election, the mayor and four incumbent councillors, and two new councillors were elected.
In addition to regular council meetings, closed meetings, and public hearings, council members also serve on advisory committees and task forces.
In 2014, the year the current council was elected, city council met on more than 30 days for regular and committee of the whole meetings, public hearings or special council meetings. In most months, council met three times, but it met four times in January, April and September, met once in July, August and November (a civic election year) and twice in December, when council normally breaks for the holidays.
