It’s doubtful to me the operations and administration committee of the whole meeting scheduled for this evening will be able to get through its agenda in the allotted four hours. I say this because councillors didn’t move through their entire agenda for the community development committee last week and bumped a fair number of items to tonight. Councillors will have come out of an in-camera session prior to tonight’s committee meeting as well.

Which puts the combined girth of both those agendas onto the regular city council agenda for June 18.

While Ward 4 Coun. Richard Carpenter made the point June 4 this may be due to the new “three weeks on, one week off” schedule council adopted in December, that doesn’t really explain most of the heft of this month’s agendas. Council takes the month of July off. With only one regular council meeting a month, that means anything requiring council approval for the summer months has to come forward for the June 18 meeting— there won’t be another regular council meeting until Aug. 27.

I’ve blogged about this in a former life, but it’s worth saying in this space too.

Council(s) should not take the summer off. Most of the rest of the working world in this province keeps working through the summer and council should too. This wouldn’t prevent large agendas and summertime meeting agendas could end up being quite brief, but this madness of stacked agendas in June and August could be dissipated.

None of the rationale on taking the month off flies with this desk. Vacations and all the other reasons can be accommodated. With the three-and-one system, there could still be quorum for many a meeting.

Categories: Brantford

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