Some people may question why Woodlands County councillors are giving so much time and effort in deciding when and where they meet.
Not me.
Council meetings, in addition to being a community newspaper's bread and butter, are the foundation of municipal government.
It is where the decisions that directly impact residents’ lives.
While it might be true that the decisions made at the provincial and federal level overall have a larger impact on society, the decisions made by local governments have the most immediate impact on our day-to-day lives.
Decisions on how to fund and deliver services such as healthcare, old age security pension, may play a larger role in our lives, but it is the decisions made by local governments that have a more immediate impact. Today, I might not have to see a doctor, but more than likely I will need to turn on a water tap or travel on a municipal road or sidewalk.
That is why it is so important to really consider how councillors choose to engage themselves and the public.
On Page A14, you will read how Woodlands County councillors are debating whether or not to change when, where and how often they meet.
One of the options being considered is the addition of an extra Whitecourt meeting where councillors can debate policies, bylaws, as well as any other non-actionable items.
The reason why they are considering the change is so council can tackle the backlog of outdated policies and bylaws (something I agree needs to be done) and shorten council meetings.
I for one do not support going to this format. Yes, the additional meeting would allow councillors to review a large number of policies and bylaws that haven’t seen attention for a long time and drastically cut down council meetings length.
When I lived in Peachland they did something similar, where the majority of items were debated in what I liked to call the “super committee” before it was forwarded to the council meeting.
So basically all councillors needed to do at the council meeting was to raise their hands, since it was a foregone conclusion that anything that came before them would pass. By doing it this way, council meetings were considerably shorter, 30 minutes at best. I think the shortest meeting I attended took seven minutes.
However, there is a cost to having shorter council meetings. The first is public engagement.
After all, that is one more meeting the media and other interested parties have to attend. Before the super committee was instituted, multiple media sources attended council meetings; afterwards, it was just one and sometimes none. The “super committee” was similarly underrepresented by the media and the public as nothing was actually concluded there.
In my opinion, everyone involved would be better served with the suggestion by CAO Paul Hanlan, who put forward the idea that councillors and/or administration review policies and bylaws through a series of workshops and then discuss it in open council.
