A number of recommendations were brought forward last week to city council to try and streamline council agendas. 

The current Procedures Bylaw was adopted in 2003 as part of The Cities Act. There were 15 recommendations made to city council, with nine that will go back to city administration to provide council with draft amendments. 

One of the more drastic changes that were recommended was where public input would land on city council agendas. 

Currently, anyone wishing to speak about a bylaw that is about to be passed or take part in the public forum must wait until near the end of the agenda before they get a chance to address city council. 

The recommendations from city administration were to add a public hearing as a stand-alone item at the beginning of the agenda, and delegations and public input on agenda items be brought to the being of the agenda as Committee of the Whole items. 

Coun. Doug Blanc was very much in favour of moving the public input portions of city council to the beginning of the agenda. 

“The public needs to come first. That's who we're here to represent, and we should listen to them. They should be at the start of the agenda so that they don't have to sit here until the late hours and whatnot. Particularly if they have kids,” he said. 

Coun. Dawn Luhning echoed those comments, saying it isn’t fair to have members of the public has to wait through a whole meeting to have their voices heard. 

“You know if people want to stay, it's a public meeting. That's fine. But I would rather they not be forced to stay if they're wanting to speak to their agenda item and it's 7:30 or 8:00 o'clock and they've been here for two hours or three hours. So that was what I was concerned about,” she said. 

The public hearings would be particularly for land use decisions that would affect neighbouring properties.  

City solicitor Myron Gulka-Tiechko said all cities handle public hearings differently. 

“For example, the City of Saskatoon actually constitutes of separate City Council meeting, just to deal with public hearings. But most other cities actually just use the public hearing portion of their agenda to sort of condensing that discretion in their regular Council meeting. So that's the approach that we're proposing here,” he said. 

Meanwhile, delegations and public input on any agenda items would be moved into the Committee of the Whole, including bylaws. The speaker would just need to summarize what they would like to discuss and what action they would like to see city council take prior to the meeting. 

“The biggest problem with that is that there is no interaction with Council. There is no opportunity for council to question them. It was just the statement and end of the meeting,” Gulka-Tiechkko said. 

“We didn't feel that that worked very well. Plus, it meant that those people had to wait until the very end of the agenda, sometimes three hours before they had their opportunity to have their say.” 

Other recommendations that went forward included an item on the agenda for confirmation of the agenda. This would allow the city clerks to update the agendas online with any late submissions and requests. 

An amendment will also be drafted so that conflict of interests is declared early in the agenda. City council is looking at an amendment that would allow council to recess a meeting and go in-camera if legal advice is needed. 

Finally, council will look to have the term “budget committee" removed as the budget is now dealt with during regular council meetings.