With one year left in their term, Lethbridge City Council members are ready for the next year of work.
Earlier this week city council held their annual organization meeting, where councillors were assigned to the different Standing Policy Committees which will give recommendations to council on the different items brought forward. Mayor Blaine Hyggen says while the majority of SPCs only have four council members appointed, other members of council will attend to have the background knowledge when the items are brought forward to council.
“You still want to have the research when it comes to voting for council,” Hyggen says. “There is no decisions made [at the committee] there are just recommendations made to council from standing policy committees.”
Hyggen adds community participation is also a big part of the process and is part of why council changed the format in 2020 to the SPC model. According to the Lethbridge mayor, the standing policy committees provide increased transparency and at each meeting members of the public can share their thoughts, with that information then taken forward to council.
“I know it has been much better since we moved from our Community Issues committee meetings, which every councilor attended to going to the standing policy committees.”
Hyggen says even though 2025 is a municipal election year, it will have no impact on how council governs, everything will be status quo.
“The election is something that obviously does come every four years, but we are elected until the next council is elected. So we should be doing that work right up until the end.”
“We don’t look at who is possibly looking at staying or not staying, you know we just look at the work needs to be done,” Hyggen says. “Because it is a shorter year, so some folks have already had time with the committee work. So we have tried to stay with a lot of similar committees.”
Lethbridge’s mayor says council is in “full on” until the election, which is set for Monday, October 20th of next year.
