Town of Sundre council workshop meetings are open to the public again, after concerns were raised from residents about a recent decision to hold the meetings in private.
“Council and the public made it very clear that everything is to be open and transparent to the public. So we are reverting back to the status quo or the way it was done before,” said Dave Dubauskas, the town's chief administrative officer (CAO), last week.
This means the workshop meetings will be open to the public and the regular meetings will begin at 6 p.m., with no administrative session beforehand.
“If anything is needed it will go in camera,” he said.
Dubauskas and Mayor Terry Leslie made the decision to change council workshop meetings from public to private in January.
Dubauskas said the meetings were for administration officials to discuss items on the agenda with councillors before making decisions at public regular council meetings.
Also included in the decision was to hold a half-hour administrative debriefing session before every regular council meeting. This changed the meeting times from 6 p.m. to 6:30 p.m.
Leslie said the decision was made in January because as a new council there is a struggle to catch up with some of the information and sometimes councillors are reluctant to speak in public meetings.
“When I sat down and chatted with Dave when he came on stream as the CAO we were talking about my perception that council meetings have big agendas,” explained Leslie.
“One of the suggestions was how about if we have some time prior to council to go over some of those items to have better information to make decisions. And I erred in thinking well, I'll just go ahead and say that's OK and we'll try it.”
He made a public apology during the council meeting on Feb. 18 for changing meeting times, but also to fellow councillors for not allowing the decision to be made as a council.
“It should have gone before council. It should have had council's blessing and approval and discussion. And that's the open, straightforward process to make any changes like that,” he said.
“That was my mistake and for that I apologized.”
If councillors feel the meetings should be closed in the future then it will be discussed during a public council meeting, he said.
“Because council made that point quite clear to me. There isn't a wish to make any changes, so things go back to the way that they were,” he said.
“There was also some question from people in the public who said they want things open and straightforward, and council listened.”
The workshop meetings are held once a month and the last one that was open to the public was on Jan. 13. The workshop meetings will be open to the public again effective March 10.
Coun. Myron Thompson said he was against the decision to close the meetings and didn't have any input on it.
“These meetings can't be closed,” said Thompson.
In the past, the workshop meetings were referred to as governance meetings. Interim CAO Doug Wright proposed the change to switch from governance meetings to council workshop meetings, which was approved and came into effect in October.
