Conversations about the future of some council-appointed boards, committees and commissions will be resumed before the holiday break.
Last week dozens of people attended the Governance Standing Policy Committee meeting to share their concerns about the board or committee they sit on being disbanded. Councillor Belinda Crowson who chairs the SPC explains the concerns come from a direction given to the city clerk’s department last year to review the various council BCC’s to see if they are functioning in the manner that was originally intended by council or if they are no longer have a function or if there are any redundancies. In July, the city clerk’s office returned with their recommendations on what committees could be transitioned to an administrative committee, what committees could be combined and which could be disbanded.
“Now we are getting back the recommendations and this is part of that beautiful part of democracy and governance where we’re working through them, having those community conversations and trying to find the best possible answers for the community, for council and for the corporation,” Crowson says. “We love the volunteers in this community who sit on our various BCC’s, but one of the things we are trying to do is find the best approach for the boards, committees and commissions. Whether they should be a council one or whether they should be an administrative.”
Crowson explains the reason some of these BCC’s are being moved to an administrative committee is it would be a better option because the guidelines in which the group has to work and convene are more fluid. She adds with this fluidity in some cases more work can be done. During the meeting councillor Jeff Carlson asked some of the BCC members in attendance why it was so important to continue working in connection to the city and not go out on their own, where they could work independently. Crowson says she believes what her colleague was trying to say is council does not want these groups “to be stuck in a certain mode just because they haven’t gotten other considerations or other opportunities.” She says there are many options for these groups to keep working with council without having be be a council committee.
“Allied Arts is a great one, they started with council being part of it years ago, United Way was started by city council back in the 1940’s it is now completely on their own. Sometimes there are options that create an even better society or better group and we have to look at all possibilities.”
“Council does a lot of great work, our committees do a lot of great work for us, but we would be blind and silly if we didn’t look at other options as well.”
Charollette Walters says the Animal Welfare committee, the committee she is on, is one council is being advised to disban. She says there has been trust lost with council and administration because of the way the process has been handled and the way the different groups have been categorized, specifically the committee she is on being described as “just rubbing stamping grants”, is not representative of the work they actually do. Walters says having the conversation start at the committee meeting is promising but she is unsure of what it means.
“Where is that conversation going to go? Is this just going to waste more time,” Walters says. “Administrative committees is not necessarily a bad thing. But how it was presented to us does not allow for rejuvenation and growth.”
She says hearing city council members say they were surprised by the recommendations being brought forward was surprising because committee members have reached out to individual councillors and talked to them. Walters says the issues around the process in her opinion come down to administration.
“There are concerns about, for lack of a better term, administration creep. If you are cutting off the very important role of civic engagement and giving it a voice and making it something just internally in an echo chamber in Lethbridge City Hall that only administration will hear, then that is a form of civic engagement but it is something that different committee members are struggling with.”
Walters says she is hopeful, but that hope comes with some skepticism of seeing how things play out. The discussion is set to return to committee at the Governance SPC meeting in December.
