City council watchers may be wondering if the mayor and councillors are playing musical chairs at their meetings.
Viewers of Monday’s council workshop may have been curious why Mayor Patrick Johnstone was not chairing the meeting, even though he was in attendance. Instead, Coun. Jaimie McEvoy sat in the “mayor’s seat” in council chamber and chaired the meeting.
In November, council approved a series of recommendations regarding changes to their meetings, including the timing of delegations at council meetings and a new meeting schedule. The changes also included designating the acting mayor to preside over workshop meetings – a change that took effect at the first workshop of 2025, which was on Jan. 21.
“This is something that I've learned that other councils around the region quite commonly do for committees of the whole or workshops. It gives the other members of council an opportunity to sit in the mayor's chair and gets them a chance to learn how to chair and get comfortable chairing,” Johnstone said in November. “And it just becomes a good practice for a lot of for other councils. They seem to enjoy doing it. So, I thought we would introduce this at the same time.”
In October 2024, council approved acting mayor appointments until October 2025. Based on that schedule, here’s who you can expect to see chairing New Westminster city council workshops, should they be scheduled:
- January/February – McEvoy
- March/April – Coun. Tasha Henderson
- May/June – Coun. Nadine Nakagawa
- July/August – Coun. Paul Minhas
- September/October – Coun. Daniel Fontaine
