City council to debate moving Monday meetings to Tuesday
In a response to quality of life concerns, Calgary’s elected officials will debate moving next year’s council meetings to Tuesdays from Mondays.
While council typically meets as a whole two to three times a month at 9:30 a.m. on Mondays for regular, combined or public hearing council meetings, city manager Jeff Fielding and Mayor Naheed Nenshi requested two calendar scenarios be prepared for 2017.
The new scenario would bump all council meetings to 9:30 a.m. Tuesdays — a move that offers zero cons and six pros, including more time to review material and “increased quality of life with less obligation to work through weekends,” a report council will discuss at Monday’s organizational meeting states.
“The proposal of Tuesday council meetings responds to ‘quality of life’ concerns expressed in the past, by providing both council and administration more time to review material and respond to issues,” states the report, which notes most Canadian municipalities do not hold meetings on Mondays.
Councillors reached Friday said long hours every day of the week are a part of public service but were divided about the switch.
Ward 1 Coun. Ward Sutherland, who often finishes reading the council agenda Sunday night, then calls other councillors for clarification, thinks the setup works fine.
“I’m good with the Mondays,” he said.
From attending committee and council meetings to reading agendas and going to events, the selfdescribed time management freak said he spends an average of 67 hours working in a typical week.
“I knew it was a lot of work, but I didn’t realize the intensity and the topics that would be covered were so diverse,” said Sutherland, who was elected in 2013.
Ward 11 Coun. Brian Pincott said he was indifferent about the schedule switch, but noted changing council meetings to Tuesday next year would involve a significant amount of re-juggling schedules.
“I never viewed the Monday as a problem because I just prepped on Sunday,” he said.
Ward 12 Coun. Shane Keating estimated he will spend six to eight hours this weekend looking through thousands of pages of documents to prep for Monday’s organizational meeting and six to seven hours in the community attending events.
He supports moving council meetings to Tuesdays.
“I think it’s a far better idea,” he said. “Often I’ll spend the Sunday morning and the Sunday evening reading the agenda, just to make sure I’m up on what’s happening on Monday. This means we could do that in the office in between (other) meetings on Mondays.”
Ward 6 Coun. Richard Pootmans said bumping council meetings to Tuesday would allow elected officials more time to spend in their ward with the public on weekends, a move he’d support.
“The best thing about being a local councillor is you do get to work with your local community a lot,” he said. “Truly, we get, as councillors, three to five invitations a day to be out in the evening seven days a week, 365 days a year ... There’s tremendous interest in people seeing their elected representative.”
Coun. Sean Chu was surprised at just how many hours were involved when he started the job in 2013, but said that doesn’t mean meetings should be switched.
“The way I look at it, it’s not broken, so don’t fix it,” he said.
Nenshi was unavailable for comment Friday.