City of Powell River Council is making changes to the way it does business.
At a special council meeting on June 29, corporate officer Chris Jackson presented recommendations that will eradicate the city’s finance committee, and change councillor responsibilities from being portfolio holders, being attached to various city departments, to being council liaisons to external community groups.
Jackson said in his presentation, he would be reviewing council member liaison appointments to external community groups, discontinuance of portfolios, formal dissolution of the finance committee and an overview of possible next steps of governance changes.
Jackson said there was a draft council liaison appointments policy that had been distributed to councillors for discussion and the purpose was to provide direct connections and facilitate communication between council and community groups on matters of mutual interest. This, he said, would be achieved through council member liaison appointments to community groups.
“Members of council could continue volunteering or be involved in any community group of their own choosing, however, only a council-appointed member would serve as official liaison,” said Jackson.
He said every member of city council is carrying a heavy load, and it will have to be determined what is reasonable for members of council to contribute, and what’s realistic.
Liaison positions
The recommendation is that council liaisons be appointed by a majority vote of council, and that they are non-voting and do not participate in deliberation and debate on matters being considered by the community group. Jackson said that liaisons would not make commitments on behalf of council or city staff on matters not aligned with council’s strategic plan or are outside of city policy. They may take requests or inquiries back to the chief administrative officer for follow-up or seek council’s formal decision, said Jackson.
He said he was looking for council direction in bringing the suggestions in a policy format that could come forward in July if it was council’s will.
Councillor Cindy Elliott said she was very supportive of having a policy, because if there is going to be a transition from a system of councillors having portfolios to liaisons, she indicated it was important that people that councillors have been working with aren’t disappointed.
“We should have a spreadsheet that includes all the work we are already doing through our portfolios connections, and whether they suit a liaison or some other type of connection,” said Elliott. “We need to be clear in how we maintain responsiveness to our community. There are systems in place that are working and we are proposing changes. We want it to affect the community as little as possible, and if possible, get better at it.”
Councillor Jim Palm said he had concerns about reducing the number of meetings that have previously been held.
“What I’m hearing from the public is, they are concerned about communication," added Palm. "If we are abolishing the portfolio system, I would like to see reference to a community communication councillor for each of those areas, to be a liaison to the community so they have someone to contact. It’s not always easy contacting staff in those various departments, because they are very busy. We are the liaison to the community.”
Councillor Trina Isakson said it is important to reduce barriers for community groups to contact council and make things less complicated.
Councillor George Doubt said with the portfolio system, each councillor had a portfolio, or more than one, where they had constant communication with staff in their portfolios.
He said he had met with people every day during the week of the council meeting, not as a liaison to a group, but he answers questions the best he can from his perspective.
Councillors busy
“If we list every group that everyone around the council table talks to and call that a duty of the councillor to speak to all those groups, we are going to be really busy people,” said Doubt. “We need to create a list of things we think is important to send a councillor to meetings. It can’t be every group in town or there will not be enough councillors to go around. We have to be careful how widely we say we are going to liaise.”
Jackson said if council creates the new liaison policy, the council governance policy would no longer apply.
He said regarding changes to the meetings structure, the summer schedule was reduced from four meetings a month to two in July, August and September. He said the recommendation is to keep the committee of the whole meetings, as well as the council meetings, during those months.
He said committee of the whole meetings and council meetings will always include a public delegation component, but there will be limited staff support coming to committee of the whole. Items that need more discussion at the table would be allocated to committee of the whole, said Jackson.
Council unanimously carried a motion to dissolve finance committee, prepare a new council liaison policy, repeal the council governance policy and to amend the delegation bylaw and officers bylaw.
