A Powell River councillor has chided colleagues for being creative with meeting procedure to satisfy a local ratepayer society.
George Doubt had words after council tried to add a new business item to the agenda at the end of its committee of the whole meeting on Tuesday (Jan. 14).
“The propriety about the end of a meeting, adding something to the agenda that hasn’t been on the agenda when the agendas are pre-published. I think it’s bad practice…but I think we keep expanding our procedure to do things that I think are a bad idea,” Doubt said.
Doubt says the letter from the Westview Ratepayers Society was received well before the meeting and could have been added properly.
The councillor says the letter asking for a budget survey extension was not urgent and suggested council needs to slow down. The budget survey closes Jan. 19 and council doesn’t meet again until Jan. 21.
The request to add it to the agenda ultimately failed.
City staff indicated if the budget survey deadline was pushed back, all the other goalposts for getting the budget completed – set back in May 2024 – would also be delayed.
On the topic of meeting procedure, city council is in the midst to updating its procedure bylaw. It gave the first two readings to the bylaw last month.
The bylaw will be coming back for third reading on Thursday next week (Jan. 23).
