Port Moody councillors will no longer have to agree unanimously if they want to extend a meeting.
Instead, it will take only a majority vote for a meeting to go up to an hour past its usual three-hour limit while any extension beyond that will still have to be approved unanimously.
The change is one of several minor procedural adjustments approved by council during a special meeting Tuesday, Dec. 17.
Some of those include where public notices must be posted, when the annual schedule for council meetings must be available along with timelines for the availability of agendas for upcoming council and committee meetings. As well, agenda items in a regular council meeting that immediately follows a public hearing on the same items will be considered first, following adoption of the agenda.
Earlier, council also approved a requirement that written submissions to public input include the sender's name and city of residence.
The requirement for unanimous consent of councillors to extend meetings has been contentious and, sometimes, led to abrupt, acrimonious adjournments.
In October, Coun. Haven Lurbiecki declined to extend a meeting at which council was considering first and second reading of zoning and official community plan bylaw amendments required for a proposal by Vancouver-based PCI Developments to build two 39-storey rental towers next to the Moody Centre SkyTrain station to proceed to a public hearing.
Port Moody councillor accuses colleagues of giving short shrift to tall towers https://t.co/06IxYNNmHh
— Tri-City News (@TriCityNews) October 23, 2024
She said the project’s scope deserved much more substantive discussion by council than could be accomplished in the extra time, suggesting her colleagues were rushing to get through the item just as they hurriedly passed first and second reading prior to adjourning for the night.
Three days later, though, council convened again in an extraordinary Friday afternoon session to reprise its consideration of PCI’s project after a procedural question had been raised about the previous meeting. But the ultimate outcome to send the proposal to a public hearing remained unchanged.
That hearing had been scheduled for Nov. 12, but was then postponed at the request of the developer. It has yet to be rescheduled.
Business of the previous council under Mayor Rob Vagramov was also disrupted when motions to extend a meeting couldn’t get unanimous agreement.
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