Maybe it’s just my Monday morning-induced blahs or the last 90 minutes I spent reading this week’s council agendas for the City of Woodstock and the County of Oxford, but this business of meeting only once a month during the summer should end.
Agendas for each meeting sit at over 150 pages each, with days still remaining for late reports to come (which most certainly will as councils don’t meet again until the second week of August). While the bulkiness of the county agenda is due to the nature of some of its reports, the city agenda in particular is packed.
It’s time to consider continuing the regular council schedule during July and August. As frequent readers here and followers of municipal councils in Oxford would know, most councils meet twice a month. Woodstock, Blandford-Blenheim, East Zorra-Tavistock, South-West Oxford and Zorra meet the first and third weeks of each month, Oxford, Tillsonburg (usually) and Norwich meet the second and fourth weeks of each month and Ingersoll meets once a month, usually in the second week.
It’s been a longtime practice for Oxford and Woodstock to step down to meeting only once a month in July, August and December— and the city usually co-ordinates its Thursday meeting to fall on the same week as the county council meeting. I’m suggesting this practice come to an end.
Woodstock and Oxford have become large enough municipalities that generate enough business for councils to consider to meet twice a month during the summer. Even in the event it’s a particularly dry summer — and certainly this hasn’t been the case in the five years I’ve covered these councils — the second meeting of the month could still be cancelled with enough notice.
This schedule would accomplish a few things— for one summertime meetings would be shorter, agenda packages slimmer, allowing a more consistent length of time (compared to other times of the year) for councillors and others to consider agenda items. Second, it would help avoid marathon-length meetings where — and this happens in long meetings throughout the year — the propensity for council to gloss over reports late in the agenda increases.
It would also help ensure that municipal business requiring council input and/or approval isn’t held up waiting for a singular council meeting per month.
Dundas and Reeve 