Penticton councillors agree to host a community open house outside of council chambers

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Penticton city council is planning a trial open house outside of regular meetings, to allow more citizens to have access to and ask questions of their representatives.

At Tuesday's meeting, Coun. Isaac Gilbert introduced a notice of motion, hoping to change the public question period scheduled at regular meetings into a quarterly open-house format.

The motion would have directed staff to develop a quarterly open house format on a separate date from regular council meetings while removing the council round table and public question period.

The proposal would also have altered the order of proceedings and move notice of motions until after staff reports.

Gilbert stated that because the public question period does not have a set time but has varying times due to the level of detail, debate, and length of presentations of agenda items, it can add limitations for the public.

With the 15-minute limit for the question period and the two-minute limit per speaker, if there are multiple members of the community seeking to ask questions to council, it may leave some residents without a chance to ask a question.

“I believe this makes it difficult if we had a lot of community members come here to ask questions of us,” he said.

The open houses would be set on a separate date from regular council meetings, in the evening, and outside of the council chambers.

“I believe it would be more accessible for our public to have conversations with us, questions for us, to meet staff and for us to meet our public if we had a set time in an evening so that the public knows that on that day, they can come to talk,” Gilbert added.

His motion as proposed was not seconded, effectively killing it. However, Mayor Julius Blomfield proposed a splitting of the motion, seeing value in having a quarterly open house format on separate issues open to the public and running it as a trial, which moved forward.

Coun. Helena Konanz and Campbell Watt said that they feel they are ‘accessible’ to the public all the time and meet or speak with the public constantly about issues. That, along with open houses throughout the year on specific matters, led them to be unsure of why another one would be needed.

“I feel like there were a lot of open houses in the last few years. I feel like I was constantly getting emails inviting me to look at certain projects or give my feedback or go to the convention centre to see something,” Konanz said. “I really don't think we need to add to that.”

JoAnne Kleb, the city’s communications and engagement manager, explained why there could be value in having the open house.

“We do have many open houses. But one thing that we haven't been able to do is really market to the community that all of council will be there. So if there was an opportunity to let the community know it might be interesting to see how many would come out just for that specific opportunity” she said.

Coun. Amelia Boultbee added that she would like to have six months on the job before the council starts changing things, but is in favour of hosting one open house as a test to see how it goes.

Gilbert was in support of the friendly amendments to his motion, and council unanimously approved a one-time open house trial.