Penticton city council has had a number of late nights over the past year, with their last two regular meetings pushing close to the 11 p.m. cutoff.
Those meetings pale in comparison to a record-setting 6.5 hour session on April 7 last year. (To proceed past 11 p.m. requires a unanimous vote from council). The council members are all adults and allowed to stay up late, but running a decision-making meeting that late into the evening should be a cause for concern. Who can say they are making their best decisions after a long day? Or, as it often seems, is discussion bypassed on some issues so they can speed things along?
Public hearings, scheduled just in advance of regular council meetings, are the usual culprit.It can delay the regular meeting by hours; this week, council spent 2.5 hours listening to opponents and supporters of a new BMX track at Munson Mountain.
There are good reasons for council to have these public hearings so close to their regular meetings — protocol calls for a vote at the next council meeting and the introduction of any new information triggers a new public hearing. Voting as soon as possible limits the “new information” factor and also stops supporters or opponents from badgering councillors in the time between the hearing and the vote. That’s on the plus side. But 10 or 15 minutes between hearing and vote isn’t enough time for councillors to process the information they just heard, which no doubt fuels claims from one side or the other that council wasn’t listening to their arguments. And it’s hard to blame them. The current structure makes it look like decisions are being made without serious reflection. Holding public hearings on the weeks between regular council meetings may not be as convenient, and council members may have to spend a week saying “no, I can’t talk about that now.”
However, it would at least give the appearance of, and most likely the fact, of deeper deliberation before coming to a conclusion. Perhaps it might even give them time for a walk in the park while they make a decision.