The City of New Westminster is taking steps to simplify council agendas so they’re easier for people to understand.
City clerk Jacque Killawee recently presented city council with a staff report outlining 12 proposed changes to council agendas.
“This presentation comes in response to a council resolution that was passed in January 2020 that requested that staff look at making process changes to make the city more welcoming and inclusive,” she explained. “This is the first of probably several reports coming out to address that motion.”
Council’s January 2020 motion suggested agendas should be made easier to read. It also recommended the city provide closed captioning for in-chamber and live-streamed city council meetings.
On May 17, council approved staff recommendations related to a new council agenda. These include simplifying the names of the meetings and the various headings within the agenda, including a purpose statement in each report and using plain language.
Killawee said staff looked at agendas from other municipalities in the region as part of its review.
“We made changes where the language wasn’t deemed to be plain language,” she said. “Sometimes we copied language from other council agendas; sometimes we just changed the language to make it more understandable.”
Killawee said a glossary of terms will also be created to help people understand the meaning of statutory terms, such as development variance permit.
According to Killawee, Literacy New Westminster and the city’s reconciliation, social inclusion and engagement task force provided input about the proposed changes.
Coun. Chinu Das stressed the need to use plain language in council agendas.
“I can’t emphasize enough the need for very, very plain and easily understood language,” she said. “It’s very, very essential. I just wanted to point that small little detail out because it is quite significant.”
Consent agendas
Community members who have attended council meetings, either in-person or online, may have noticed council begins its meetings by stating which items have been “pulled” from the consent agenda. Prior to the public meeting, council decides which items will be “pulled” from the consent agenda for council to discuss.
Killawee said the statement about the consent agenda is “one of most problematic parts of our agenda” for the public to understand, in part because it’s made at the beginning of the meeting, even though consent agenda items aren’t dealt with until later in the meeting. In addition, she said there may be a lack of understanding of what the consent agenda actually means.
“We won’t do the consent agenda right at beginning of the agenda anymore. We will do it where it logically falls in the agenda, with the hope that people can understand it,” she said. “There are many members of the public who have sat through an entire meeting not understanding that their item was already passed in the first two minutes of the meeting.”
Coun. Patrick Johhstone supported the changes, noting people are often confused by the consent agenda. He also likes the idea of include a “purpose” statement in each report to help people better understand the issue being considered by council.
“I think it is really important. It will really help people understand what is going on,” he said. “I am really looking forward to these changes.”
Council members told staff they want to ensure it’s clear to the public that items “pulled” from the consent agenda mean those items will be discussed at the meeting, while those that aren’t removed from the consent agenda mean the recommendations in those reports are supported by council.
Mayor Jonathan Cote suggested there should also be some sort of verbal indication at council meetings about which items have been approved as part of the consent agenda and which had been removed for discussion.
“I think we have all sat in council meetings where we have seen people sitting in the audience for sometimes over an hour and then at the end are very disappointed when their item never came up,” he said.
Coun. Nadine Nakagawa said the changes will be a “huge advantage” in helping people to understand what council is considering at its meetings.
“I think we are at a good start in terms of the look of the agenda, and the readability of the agenda is looking so much improved,” she said. “I just even think, for councillors who are starting their term next year, I think this will be helpful for them.”
(The next municipal elections in B.C. will take place on Saturday, Oct. 15, 2022.)
The changes to the council agenda will be implemented in September 2021.
Electronic agendas
The changes to the council agendas will coincide with a new electronic agenda system, e-Scribe, which is being purchased by the city and is expected to be implemented in September. Staff say its advantages include allowing for closed captioning of live-streamed meetings.
“In 2014, the city was actually one of the early adopters of an electronic agenda system,” Killawee said. “It really helped to meet our organizational goals, as well as environmental goals. That system is now obsolete and is in need of replacing, and it’s in the 2021 budget to replace that system.”
Another feature of the new system, said Killawee, is that all public agendas will be displayed in a very simple, graphic calendar for the public to see.
As the city transitions to new video system, staff sought council’s feedback on the length of time videos of council meetings should remain on the city’s website. Video of council meetings going back to 2011 is currently available on the city’s website.
Killawee said the practice in other municipalities ranges from not providing any ability to view council meetings after the meeting occurs to retaining the videos online for various lengths of time. She said staff is proposing a “middle ground” in New West, which would see the city retain videos on its website for a rolling four-year period that coincides with each four-year council term.
Coun. Jaimie McEvoy supported having videos of council meetings posted on the city’s website for four years, provided older videos could still be archived.
“As long as there is some ability to keep that historical record, I think that’s fine,” he said.
According to Killawee, if people want to see a video from an earlier council meeting they would make a request to the clerk’s office, as is currently done when a council agenda isn’t available on the city’s website, and staff would make it accessible.
“I think you have found a good balance between keeping what’s currently on the agenda available and finding a way for archives to manage the older videos,” Johnstone said.
Killawee said the minutes of council meetings, not videos, are the official record of a council meeting, and the minutes are what’s requested by the courts.
Coun. Mary Trentadue said it makes sense to keep videos on the city’s website for the current council term.
“Since the video is not the official record of the council meeting, I guess I don’t want to see staff have to undergo all kinds of additional work to continually migrate really old video. I think that just become really labour intensive, especially if systems are changed over,” she said. “I am happy with the four years, and I am less concerned about an archival of the videos if that become a project or a task that has to be revisited all the time with migrating and using different systems.”
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