If you got home just after 6 p.m. on Monday night, and you were looking forward to watching the Estevan city council meeting, then you might have been disappointed.
Monday night’s meeting was about 15 minutes in length. About half of the meeting was dedicated to inquiries.
It means that in the second half of a 15-minute meeting, the only motion was to go into committee.
And this was the only meeting council has had in the past four weeks.
Maybe council members were asked to be on their best behaviour and to keep the conversation short Monday night because Mayor Roy Ludwig is still on a European holiday, one that is much-deserved. Councillor Travis Frank wasn’t at the meeting either.
Councillor Trevor Knibbs was tasked with chairing the meeting. We believe it’s the first time he has been asked to do so for council. And while there’s no doubt that Knibbs, a respected and successful local businessman, has chaired meetings before, there’s a big difference between the meetings he has guided traditionally, and chairing a city council meeting that is public.
Regardless of the circumstances, the first city council meeting in four weeks should be longer than 15 minutes.
The previous meetings were also about 15 minutes in length.
These are meeting lengths that should be expected for the Estevan board of police commissioners, not city council.
This is not a call for council members to grandstand, or to read out every single report that comes before council, or to have long-winded diatribes that annoy the viewers.
And this is definitely not a call for a return to the council meetings that we saw in 2002 or 2003, which were scheduled to start at 7 p.m., didn’t begin until 7:30 p.m., and then often lasted until close to midnight.
(Those meetings only served to show the rifts that existed among the council of the day, and turn people off of city council).
But perhaps a brief explanation of the documents that appear before council, particularly the bylaws, would help extend the meetings, so that they don’t feel rushed.
Yes, the agenda packages are posted online. But even in 2019, there are people who don’t have the Internet.
Council likes to talk about how they have improved their transparency, and how they are sharing more with the public. And they are. We see it with the open houses they have had, and with the way in which they are seeking public feedback for everything from the community plan to the recreation needs assessment to the Launch Box business incubator.
But when it comes to city council meetings, people can be forgiven for wondering why these meetings are so short.
There are issues, such as personnel matters, that need to be discussed in committee. There are matters that do need to stay behind closed doors, just like with any other business.
But some people do wonder what goes on behind those closed doors after council, and why these matters aren’t being discussed in the open.
A city of this size should be able to get more than 15 minutes of discussion for its first meeting in four weeks.
And a city of this size should have enough on its agenda to have two meetings a month with good discussion (and yes, debate) of what is happening in the community. Half the meeting shouldn’t be inquiries, which often winds up being show and tell.
It’s not likely going to get any better this year. The fall meetings are typically the shortest of the year. After all, the tenders have been awarded, the bulk of the projects have been completed and we’re still a few months away from budget deliberations.
Council also has two meetings scheduled for each of the last three months of the year.
Are we going to see some 10 minute meetings? Will they have to cancel one or two meetings because they won’t have enough on the agenda?
Last year we were routinely seeing 15 or 20-minute meetings in the fall.
Hopefully council will resolve to have a little more discussion in the final three months of the year, and somewhat longer meetings.
