Coun. Cam MacKay made a good point when he told the Gazette that meeting times for St. Albert city council could be a barrier for some qualified people to run for municipal office.
Council positions in the city – other than the mayor – are part time and do not come with a salary that would allow a person to quit their day job. Experience has shown a well-prepared councillor should spend about 25 hours per week attending and preparing for meetings. While salaries are under review, councillors are paid a little more than $35,000 annually plus compensation for attending meetings and retirement contributions. The mayor is full time and earns $100,000.
When deciding to run for office, potential council candidates have a lot to think about considering the level of sacrifice that is involved. Juggling work, family life and other obligations with the responsibilities of elected office is no small feat.
While some level of sacrifice is expected and there is no escaping daytime meetings, especially at the committee level, the municipality should be endeavouring to reduce the barriers to seeking office. One way to do that is set meeting times so they are conducive to people attending. MacKay is right about qualified people being hesitant to run for office if they know meetings will conflict with work, especially if they are the household’s primary or sole breadwinner.
When the motion to move meeting times from 3 p.m. to 2 p.m. was made before the end of last year, Coun. Sheena Hughes recognized the plight some working councillors – such as MacKay – might face and tried to amend the motion to schedule meetings later, beginning at 4 p.m. Unfortunately, she was the lone voice and her amendment was slaughtered 6-1. Despite being the only councillor with a fulltime job, MacKay voted against Hughe’s motion because he said council was elected with the expectation that meetings would start at 3 p.m.
Mayor Nolan Crouse, who put forward the motion to schedule meetings earlier, said last week the move was to encourage more public attendance. He added that school classes, hockey parents and some professionals have an easier time attending meetings because they are busier in the evenings.
We do not see school field trips warranting a change to council meeting times, especially if it limits the number of candidates able to run for office. As for when the public can attend a meeting either to observe or as a delegation, that will happen regardless of time if the issue is important to them. The accessibility argument also doesn’t fly when considering public hearing times remained 5 p.m., presumably because council knew that was the time most people in the city could attend.
When council voted to schedule times earlier, councillors Wes Brodhead and Tim Osborne pointed out that council meetings generally last about six hours and that decision-making degrades the later meetings go.
While that might be true, city council meetings are notoriously inefficient, as we have stated on more than one occasion. Many meetings suffer from councillors being unprepared or taking up time making long-winded and often unnecessary speeches.
To solve that problem, and allow meetings to start at 4 p.m. and end at 8 or 9 p.m., councillors need to be well prepared and take a more focused approach. Everyone benefits when meetings run smoothly. Working people looking to serve their community are bound to find that appealing.
