Goderich council is considering going to one meeting a month rather than the current two meetings a month.
Mayor Myles Murdock says they have some issues.
“We have some issues in terms of when you go to a two-week interval, getting staff to prepare documents as well as do their regular job is sometimes very difficult and then from a time-sensitive nature things become delayed," Murdock stated.
Murdock says they're looking at one meeting each month as a possibility and the next step is a trial run. He says they would still only have one meeting in December and one in July and August, as they do now. So, he says the difference would be about six council meetings over a year. He says the trial run would give them an indication about how that would impact the length of a council meeting and if they would end up having to hold special meetings to address urgent issues.
“I think we can achieve everything within a two and a half hour meeting, every three weeks. And if we can't do that, then we're going to have to make some changes and the change may be we go to three hours or we go to every two weeks," added Murdock.
If the need for a special meeting arose to address a specific and urgent issue, Murdock says he would have no problem with that, but he wouldn't call a special meeting unless it was necessary. He says they won't know until they try, so the next step is a trial with one meeting a month and he adds, there may be some months where a second meeting is necessary, but they won't know until they try.
