City council efficiency

Regarding Scott Radley’s recent column about city council meetings, many of his suggestions would be ways to get council’s business done within the new eight-hour meeting cap rather than being inherently better ways to shorten meetings. He suggests shorter meetings from less talking might boost citizen engagement, but there shouldn’t be a rule about it. They’re not mutually exclusive. Yes, council can extend meetings beyond this limit on a case-by-case basis, but what this new bylaw does is set the default to a time that is more humane for councillors and staff as human beings and as workers and allows everyone involved to predict when they might be available for children or other care responsibilities more accurately.

What troubles me more is the implication that our new council is wasteful and not hard-working. Some councillors asked for bigger office budgets to hire staff to engage with constituents, a rationale that was provided transparently. Council’s upcoming consideration of the largest tax increase in several years is the direct and predictable consequence of previous councils’ decisions to cut costs short-term without balanced fiscal planning for long-term infrastructure and service needs. To spend most of the article offering (presumably) better ways to shorten meetings, and then chastise council for voting for “shorter work hours” is an interesting sleight of hand; although not the same as total work hours, as the author himself points out, I thought shorter meetings were a good thing. Do I sense a wistfulness for a bygone era?

C.A. Klassen, Hamilton