There’ll be less votin’ and more talkin’ at the District of North Vancouver municipal hall for the next year.
The district has reduced the number of regular meetings of council by one-third for 2019 and replaced them with workshops.
Council has just 19 regular meetings scheduled for 2019 compared to 30 in 2018. Workshops are much less formal than regular council meetings, with council members tending to address each other by first name and rattling off questions for staff to research. There are no binding votes in workshops.
Previously, council workshops took place on Monday afternoons before the regular weekly council meeting.
“It’s worked out well as a format for us and we proposed trading away some regular council meetings for more public workshops on specific topics,” said Mayor Mike Little. “The regular meeting structure is pretty restrictive in terms of free flow of conversation and getting information back and forth for staff.”
Chief administrative officer Dave Stuart said the district usually swaps council meetings for workshops in the year following a municipal election to give the new council more time to set its priorities for the rest of the term.
Much of the discussion over the next year will likely be regarding a review of the district’s official community plan, Little said, starting with a workshop on Jan. 29.
“We haven’t had a discussion as a council to refine the scope of the review, but I think there has been general agreement that we’re going to be reviewing aspects of the official community plan,” he said. “I think staff want to get a sense of what kind of scope we’re talking about first. Is it a full-on review – everything on the table? Is it tweaking things? Is it just addressing some of the targets? Or does it focus on the local area plans?”
Council’s procedure bylaw only requires meetings to be held on the first and third Monday of every month, minus statutory holidays, and it has been tradition to not schedule meetings for breaks in the spring, summer and winter.
The usual schedule will likely return in 2020, Stuart said.
The City of North Vancouver is not scaling back its council meetings for 2019 and the District of West Vancouver council already meets just twice a month.
