Vernon City Hall eyes committee cuts

VERNON – City Hall is playing with the structure, and overall number, of its council committees.

The “streamlining” as the city calls it, could translate as cutting committees, consolidating them, or a combination of both. The area was first spotlighted in a 2013 core services review by KPMG that looked at how the city spends its money.

Coun. Brian Quiring wants to be clear the plan isn’t to drop committees but to “consolidate them to make the meetings more efficient.”

All community issues will still get attention, perhaps even more than before, Quiring says. They’ll just be grouped under one roof.

“Meetings were canceled because there weren’t enough people,” he says. “People would see an agenda with one or two items on it and maybe say ‘we’ll skip this one.’”

Combining committee topics will help ensure the meetings run and the issues are heard, he says.

Reducing the number of committees would mean fewer community volunteers are needed at the table.

While it was sometimes a challenge to fill vacancies, Mayor Rob Sawatzky wants to personally thank all the individuals who “gave their time to make Vernon the great city it is.”

“Our goal through the reorganization of council's committee structure is to provide cost effective means of public and organization input to important policy decisions and direction for our community,” Sawatzky said. “However, council and myself have tremendous appreciation and gratitude for the volunteer work of those who have sat on these committees.”

The restructuring process is expected to wrap up by May 1. 

To contact the reporter for this story, email Charlotte Helston at chelston@infotelnews.ca or call 250-309-5230. To contact the editor, email mjones@infotelnews.ca or call 250-718-2724.