Beginning Tuesday, the town’s council meetings will start at 6 p.m. rather than 7 p.m.
View Royal council meetings will start an hour earlier so they end in a more timely way for councillors with day jobs.
The town’s council meetings will start at 6 p.m. rather than 7 p.m. beginning Tuesday after council formalized the time changes.
“I don’t think anyone is really effective in decision-making three and a half hours into a meeting late at night,” said Mayor Sid Tobias.
In the past, it seemed that staff and council often were just “waiting around” for the 7 p.m. council start, he said. “The intent is that we get done a little bit earlier.”
View Royal is also pushing back its committee of the whole meetings from 3:30 p.m. to 6 p.m., which Tobias said will make it easier for current and future councillors who work daytime jobs to attend.
Tobias said there was no opposition from the public to the changes, which were decided over several council meetings. “If the public had a problem with it, they had lots of opportunity to weigh in.”
Council also approved a process to combine routine and non-controversial items in a single motion to help streamline meetings.
Coun. Gery Lemon, the only person to vote against the time changes, said she was concerned about the council meeting time change from 7 p.m. to 6 p.m.
“Council meetings started at 7 p.m. for 35 years,” the two-term councillor said, adding that the change might confuse those who regularly show up to the meetings.
Tobias said View Royal council meetings usually attract only a handful of in-person and online attendees. More people tend to watch the meeting recordings later when they’re posted online, he said.