OLDS — Starting next month, town council’s policies and priorities meetings are moving back from 10 a.m. to their old 1 p.m. start time, at least until November.
Council made that decision during its April 11 meeting.
The first meeting affected will be the May 2 meeting. Other meetings moved back will be those on June 7, Tuesday July 4, Tuesday Sept. 6, and Oct. 3.
Regular council meetings, usually held on the second and fourth Mondays of each month, are not affected by this decision, as their start times have been 1 p.m. all along.
Policies and Priorities (P &P) meetings are held on the first Monday of each month. They serve as a kind of clearinghouse, where council members get a first look at some matters, plus receive statistics from staff as well as presentations from the public.
Interim Chief administrative officer Sheena Linderman brought the matter up for discussion, noting that during its organizational meeting last October, council decided to move the start time for P & P meetings to 10 a.m. as an experiment.
Coun. Darren Wilson took advantage of the proposal to suggest moving council and/or P & P meetings to an evening start time, to make it easier for members of the public to attend them, an idea he’s suggested once or twice before. In years past, some were held at 6 p.m.
“I know the challenges that presents for staff attending and so on and access to their expertise and services and the cost involved, but it would be nice if of all the meetings the two council meetings we have – two council meetings and a P & P meeting – to try to at least accommodate an evening meeting somewhere so that folks can perhaps attend live,” Wilson said.
Mayor Judy Dahl said that idea could be brought during council’s organizational meeting this October.
“We’ll revisit that conversation at that time,” she said.
