It has become a regular feature at city council that the meeting ends before all the business on the agenda has been completed.
Specifically, individual motions from city councillors, which are near the bottom of the agenda, are often carried over meeting to meeting before they are finally dealt with.
A motion – if it is heard – coming at the Nov. 26 meeting aims to fix that by starting council meetings at 2 p.m. instead of 6 p.m. It is being moved by Ward 12 Coun. Joscelyne Landry-Altmann, Ward 9 Coun. Deb McIntosh and Ward 10 Coun. Fern Cormier.
The problem is to continue meetings that begin at 6 p.m. past 9 p.m. requires the consent of two-thirds of council, something that rarely occurs unless there is pressing business still to deal with.
A similar move saw planning committee meetings – which can go as long as five hours – moved to 1 p.m. instead of 6 p.m. Operations committee meetings were moved to 2 p.m.
The motion is one of five on the Nov. 26 agenda. Another, from Ward 2 Coun. Michael Vagnini, would delay the 2020 budget process until early next year. Vagnini argues the current budget – which includes a provisional 3.5 per cent tax hike – is a “top down” budget that prevents councillors from “doing an in-depth review.”
He goes further, arguing the current process violates the Municipal Act, which requires councillors to “ensure the accountability and transparency of the operations of the municipality, including the activities of the senior management of the municipality.”
The motion would delay approval of the 2020 budget until the first quarter of 2020, and directs “staff prepare a zero-based budget and present it to council at the Jan. 14, 2020, Finance and Administration Committee meeting.”
Another motion, backed by Vagnini, Ward 1 Coun. Mark Signoretti, Ward 3 Coun. Gerry Montpellier and Ward 11 Coun. Bill Leduc, calls for Auditor General Ron Foster to complete an audit of the Maley Drive extension.
Staff have said the project is on time and on budget – in fact, a $4 million budget surplus allowed a longer stretch of Maley to be four-laned.
Apparently suspicious of the staff reports – Vagnini predicted when the project began it would bleed red ink — the motion would have Foster audit “all direct costs linked to the project such as design, surveys, Environmental Assessments, marketing materials and communications about the project, any associated costs incurred and charged to other capital or operational envelopes (i.e. water/wastewater work), all completed, outstanding and anticipated land acquisition costs, and any other costs incurred as a result of the project, and to present the Audit Report to Council at the earliest possible date, which can be accommodated within the Auditor General’s approved work plan.”
Another motion from Vagnini would amend the city's taxi bylaw (which covers all vehicles for hire) to allow companies to use vehicles that are older than 10 years because many of them are “so well maintained that their condition does not reflect their model years, and could continue to be safely operated and transport passengers.”
Adding that flexibility would reduce operating costs, the motion says, and make the companies more viable.
