Coaldale town council to host meetings in the evening

By Nikki Jamieson
Sunny South News

Effective Feb. 24, Coaldale town council will be changing their regular meeting times.

“Basically with our strategic planning session midterm update that we did Nov. 7 and 8, two of the discussion items were the change of the council meeting dates back to the five o’clock hour, and there was consensus by council that would be an idea worth entertaining,” said Mayor Kim Craig during council’s regular Jan. 27 meeting.

According to the Municipal Government Act, “a council may decide at a council meeting at which all the councillors are present to hold regularly scheduled council meetings on specified dates, times and places”.

Although regular meetings do not have to be advertised, “If council changes the date, time or place of a regularly scheduled meeting, the municipality must give at least 24 hours’ notice of the change”.

Coaldale town council has previously met in the evenings, however, starting March 12, 2018, they changed from a evening meeting to a 1 p.m. meeting time. The meeting time was later pushed back to 2 p.m.

Council had also discussed live-streaming during the strategic planning session.

The strategic planning facilitator from Civic Excellence had advised that while live-streaming was not considered best practice, they had cautioned that since it has been implemented it would not be advisable to stop doing it, according to a handout at the council meeting.

Craig said that “no real, clear consensus” in regards to live-streaming, and suggested that they discuss it at a later date.

Council will continue to meet on the second and fourth Monday of each month, with the exception of the meeting date falling on a statutory holiday, for which it would be rescheduled, and during the months of July and December, where council is scheduled to meet only once a month, and August, which currently has no council meeting scheduled.

Council unanimously passed a motion to change the council meeting time be changed to 5 p.m. and that live-streaming continue for the time being.

Coun. Bill Chapman was not in attendance at the meeting.

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