London councillors tackle lengthy meetings

Council spent a brief time debating long debates at council meetings Tuesday after two councillors proposed a cap on the clock.

A proposal from Ward 1 Coun. Michael van Holst and Ward 6 Coun. Phil Squire to put a cap on how late council and committee meetings can go was rejected by the corporate services committee.

Despite rejecting the proposal, which called for meetings to go no later than 11:30 p.m., councillors did agree drawn-out meetings can be a problem.

Council rules state meetings must end by 11 p.m. but they can be extended by a vote of council.

The Feb. 14 council meeting that led to the departure of former city manager Art Zuidema was the most recent meeting to go late: it didn’t wrap up until 12:30 a.m.

Mayor Matt Brown suggested councillors could talk less or they could hold meetings in the afternoon.

“If you think about the size of our community, 400,000 people, it’s the 11th-largest community in Canada. Many, if not all, other communities this size meet during the day and it’s something we could consider,” Brown said.

Ward 4 Coun. Jesse Helmer disagreed with the notion that council has a problem with late meetings. Helmer looked back at the first two years of this council term and found six of 103 meetings involving full council went late, meaning meetings went past 11 p.m. less than six per cent of the time.

The only meetings that include full council are the strategic priorities policy committee and city council meetings.

Helmer said he would be open to changing when meetings begin.

“I’m glad we’re talking about maybe starting the meetings earlier because … if we want to avoid 11 p.m. or midnight, it’s easy to do that, we can start the meetings at a different time,” Helmer said.

Start times for committee and council meetings vary.

Tuesday’s corporate services committee meeting started at noon while the civic works committee meeting on the same day began at 4 p.m. Typically council meetings start at 5 p.m. with councillors going in-camera for legal advice before council begins in earnest.

If a change to daytime meetings were to happen, some meetings would still happen at night to ensure greater participation from the public who are typically better able to attend meetings held in the evening.