SUNDRE — Town council approved a couple of amendments to the municipality’s procedural bylaw for elected officials as recommended by a committee following a review of the guiding document.
Recapping background information to date, Linda Nelson, chief administrative officer, reminded council on June 13 during a regularly scheduled meeting that the Bylaw Policy Review Committee – which is comprised of all of council – had recently had an opportunity to review council’s procedural bylaw.
“There were just a couple of items that council was requesting clarification on,” Nelson said. “Otherwise, the procedural bylaw itself, the committee felt was quite effective.”
There were only two recommended amendments, and both of them were under the document’s Section 18 titled “Control and Conduct of Council Meetings.”
Nelson said the changes essentially boiled down to redefining two motions, she said.
The first was under Section 18.6.d pertaining to motions that shall not be debatable by council, and was revised and amended to read “the subject matter of a referral motion is not debatable” replacing the previous wording of “the referral motion is not debatable.”
“The motion itself is debatable,” she said. “But the subject matter is not.”
The second change was very similar, she said, referring to a recommendation to redefine another portion of Section 18.6 under sub section “e.”
“Where it currently reads ‘table the matter to another meeting,’ that item should be redefined to state, ‘the subject matter of a motion to table the matter to another meeting,’” she said.
“And those two items would then not be debatable by council. Those are the only two changes.”
According to information outlined in council’s agenda package for the meeting, the amended bylaw “will more clearly define the procedural process by removing ambiguities within the bylaw.”
Council proceeded to give the bylaw all three readings and approved the amended bylaw, a copy of which is available in full on the town’s website in the council agenda package for the June 13 meeting.
