The City’s Governance and Priorities Committee reviewed a report earlier this week that broke down how long council and its committees meet for over the last year.

In 2020/21, council and its committees met for a total of 249.5 hours. Council and its committees heard from 203 speakers during the 2020-21 year that compares to 180 speakers the previous year.

2019-20 and 2020-21 saw 417 and 937 written pieces of correspondence respectively. The responses were primarily due to social policy issues surrounding conversion therapy and reconciliation with the renaming of John A. Macdonald Road.

Mike Jordan, the City’s chief government relations officer says the data will be used to make any adjustments in the future to the council structure if needed.

“Definitely having the data is certainly helpful in some ways, you know some of the things to think about, meeting times, meeting dates, things like that as well. Is there anything to add to the agenda releases, all those things are on the table for discussion.”

City staff say they’ve made some internal changes to notify the BIDs and other businesses groups in a more efficient manner if an event is coming up involving them so they time to review the reports.

The City has operated under the current governance structure since 2014.