Council holds two meetings per month, Committee of the Whole every second Tuesday and regular council every third Monday.
Committee of the Whole (COW) is where motions are made to recommend council pass a decision. Nothing passed in these sessions is binding.
When regular council is held the following week, the councillors' votes are binding.
However Mayor Clarke says most of the debate is in COW, and doing it a second time is repetitious since nearly all motions are passed with little extra debate in regular council.
"My goal is not to save councillor time, it's to become more efficient and avoid this replication," he said, adding two meetings also waste staff time.
If decisions needed to be made more frequently, he said they could hold two council meetings each month.
Coun. Bruce Inglis suggested moving council to the evening might also make a difference, to be more available to the public.
Mayor Clarke said it has been done in the past and nobody came. The biggest downside, he added, was the pressure it put on staff.
"Meetings can run to 11 to 11:30 at night, and then you expect staff to be at work in the morning"
Coun. Brian Fralic wasn't sure if eliminating COW was a good idea, but suggested it might be useful to record council meetings for public access.
Kathleen Rafuse, Chief Administrative Officer for the Region of Queens, added at the end of the meeting COW is useful for her and staff to make sure they have all of the information councillors Mayor Clarke suggested a three month trial without COW to see if it works. A motion is set to come forward on the March 18 meeting.
