Lethbridge City Hall. (Lethbridge News Now)

By David Opinko

City adopts new governance model, includes moving council meetings to Tuesdays

Dec 16, 2020 | 3:22 PM

LETHBRIDGE, AB – The structure of Lethbridge City Council will look a bit different going forward.

At this week’s meeting, the new Standing Policy Committee (SPC) Governance Model was approved and will take effect on January 1, 2021.

One of the changes sees city council meetings taking place on Tuesdays instead of Mondays, beginning with their first sitting of the new year on January 12.

Agendas will now be published one week before the meeting takes place. This gives people more time to review the scheduled items in advance.

“This strategic and visionary model is good governance and will provide more transparency and more public participation to Lethbridge City Council meetings,” says Councillor Belinda Crowson.

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The SPC governance model will:

• Define and support specific roles and standard processes for decision making
• Direct subject area specific questions to the appropriate level, allowing for Councillors to develop expertise in those areas, and clarifies where public debate will occur
• Include the ability of committees to specialize in subject areas, as departments would roll up to a specific committee for policy discussions

Ending Council appointments on most Boards, Committees and Commissions (BCCs) will allow for:

• Council to remain at the strategic, governance level rather than their current, more operational level interaction with the BCCs
• The BCCs were developed as a forum for public engagement and should be used as such – adding Council members has clouded their role and can make it difficult for both community members and Councillors to voice their opinions

Among the other changes and updates:

• SPC meetings will be added to the Council Meeting Calendar for public awareness
• SPC agendas will be publicly available one week in advance at https://agendas.lethbridge.ca/AgendaOnline/, as well as sent to all of Council so that non-member Councillors are aware and can choose to participate
• SPC minutes will be accessible shortly after the meeting
• SPC meetings will be streamed and recorded
• Instead of having Council deal with every issue in detail at Council meetings. SPCs will be more efficient and reduce the time spent in Council meetings. The Consent Agenda will be used for items coming from Committee whether for information or decision
• SPCs will improve reports prior to presenting to Council by amending or referring back to Administration or a BCC; When City Council meets, they consider these recommendations from the Standing Policy Committees to help with their decision-making
• Items currently received for information at SPC would have actionable recommendations
• SPCs are more focused on select topics, allowing for Councillors to develop expertise in those areas