Townsville City Council makes changes to meeting frequency
In its first meeting of the term, the Townsville City Council has changed the frequency of meetings, and removed committees.
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Townsville City councillors have voted to hold two council meetings a month and abolish the technical committee meetings.
In the previous term the council held one meeting each month while six different committees with their own minutes would be held privately, which involved issues such as infrastructure, environment and business services.
But committee meetings were something that the new mayor Troy Thompson promised to abolish and to replace them with “as many council meetings we can get”.
Councillors voted unanimously to expand open meetings to the first and third Wednesdays of the month.
Legal counsel executive Tony Bligh brought the proposal before the council and said there was a “public accountability benefit” in having all councillors present to discuss these issues.
The content from these six committees would be split across the two council meetings to try to keep them to “an appropriate length”.
Mr Bligh said the total amount of meetings would be reducing rather than doubling, which would reduce the burden on the operations team.
“Probably the greatest benefit the council and community will find is the minutes will become much easier to follow,” he said.
“Because instead of just the reference committee decisions there’s just a decision.”
Advisory committees formed by community representation would still remain.
The Townsville City Council website said standing committees “enable complex or strategic issues to be discussed at length without the time constraints normally imposed at an ordinary meeting of council.
“Committees conduct much of the investigative and detailed work leading towards a recommendation to council to enable an informed decision to be made.”
Originally published as Townsville City Council makes changes to meeting frequency
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