the broken typewriter

They’re your neighbours, your colleagues, people you see at the grocery and hardware stores. They’re just like you, seven regular people with families, friends, careers. But they’re also people with a desire to serve their community, to help make sure our community is a solid, well-run Energetic City worthy of the name. A place where every one of us can feel safe, thrive and be proud to call home.

That’s who the members of Fort St. John City Council are.

How does this group of regular people achieve this goal, while keeping the city fiscally responsible and transparent?

Recently, The Broken Typewriter sat down with three members of City staff to learn about how Council works.

Through the two main meetings – the Committee of the Whole (CoW) and regular Council – which are open to the public, council members discuss and give direction on the matters before them. They’re often routine, like the city’s annual budget where the city lists where all its money comes from and where they’re going to spend it. But there are also special things which have come out of a need that’s apparent in the community, concerns from the public, or directives from higher levels of government, such as the province.

A recent example is when the provincial government, in its efforts to respond to the housing crisis, told all municipalities to change their zoning bylaws to allow multiple dwellings on properties that had been zoned Single Family Residential. After much discussion by Council, the city came up with a way to comply, but to do it without changing the character of the city.

Council operations are all about discussion and direction. At the CoW, they discuss. At the regular council meeting, they give direction to staff to come up with options for a zoning bylaw which would meet the government’s requirements but also maintain the character of the city. Then that report comes back to the CoW for more discussion before going back to regular council for a decision.

The CoW is for discussion and where Council gets more information to better understand the issues on the topics in front of them.

It takes the place of a host of smaller committees, such as Finance, Recreation, Public Works and so on. Fort St. John used to have these committees, but during Jim Eglinski’s time as mayor the city had rolled all except Select Standing Committees into the Committee of the Whole. All councillors and the mayor sit on the CoW – the Peace River Regional District’s board of directors and the District of Taylor’s council operate the same way – but as Deputy Chief Administrative Officer Darrell Blades said the Committee of the Whole is for discussion only.

Committees only make recommendations to council, according to Corporate Officer Bonnie McCue.

“So, although all of Council is there, that’s not the table that they make the council decisions at,” McCue said.

It’s also at the regular council meetings that mayor and council bring up matters that they would like city staff to investigate. This is done through New Business and Notice of Motions.

Like the recent items brought forward by Councillors Jim Lequiere and Trevor Bolin. During the regular council meeting, they said they would be bringing a Notice of Motion at the next meeting – Lequiere’s about Backyard Hens, and Bolin’s about allowing the public to ask questions during council meetings. These Notices of Motion direct staff to investigate the various avenues for carrying out whatever idea council members have come up with, and to bring a report back.

The report then comes back to the CoW, where Council hears staff’s thoughts on the subject, often through a presentation as well as a report, and they have an opportunity to discuss it, ask for more information and get an idea of how they want to proceed. It then goes to the regular council meeting, where Council votes on their preferred option, sometimes with amendments as a result of the discussion in the CoW.

“It’s really about giving Council more information to really support or inform a decision, but the decision has to happen at the regular council table,” said Blades.

Say it’s a bylaw amendment, like the Council Procedure Bylaw amendment Bolin is suggesting. Then staff take the decision from Council and goes to back and finalizes a version of the draft bylaw in the report for Council to vote on at a later meeting.

Public and Statutory Hearings and Public Meetings are where the public gets to give Council feedback on bylaws and things like the budget. For example, on March 10, the city had a Public Meeting to both present the 2025 Operating and Capital Budget to the public and answer questions from the public about the budget.

Three people got up to speak, two with questions about the Peace River Agreement funds and one with comments about accessibility in the city. Making the city more accessible to people with all types of disabilities would fall under the Capital Budget as changes to infrastructure, like letdowns at the curb for example, are needed.

On August 25, there is another Public Hearing, this time for a zoning amendment bylaw, so that the Co-op can expand the services they’re offering on 100 Street, near the Church of Jesus Christs of the Latter-day Saints on 114^th Avenue.

Regular Council meetings are where the decisions are made, like reading the zoning amendment bylaw three times, which is part of the procedure to pass bylaws. The first two readings give Council a chance to review it, make changes to any wording that they think is needed. The third reading is when Council confirms that the bylaw is ready to be adopted and put into force.

So, if, after today’s Public Hearing there are no major concerns from the public, such as a nearby property owner, about the proposed development and changes to the zoning bylaw to make that happen, Council will reconvene the regular meeting and give third reading to the bylaw.

In the agenda for regular council meetings, there is what’s called the Council Information Package. It contains things for Council, like the monthly report from the RCMP on the state of crime in our community.

Blades described it as being transparent about things that come to Council, even if Council has no interest in dealing with it.

McCue says the Council Information Package is like a Consent Agenda, which the PRRD uses. It’s “a way to bring documents into the public record – that this letter was received, and was addressed to Mayor and Council, but Council had no direction from it. It’s just for information.”

Even though it’s just for information, Council votes to “receive for discussion” in case there is something that council members do wish to discuss. Councillor Tony Zabinsky frequently pulls items from the package to comment on, particularly items from community groups who write to Council to thank them for their support or attendance at an event.

Chief Administrative Officer Milo MacDonald says that everything Council does is grounded in the Community Charter, a piece of legislation that governs how municipal governments operate, laying out the rules and procedures.

“The whole point of it is transparency, and it’s a good thing,” MacDonald said.

Councillor Bolin’s Notice of Motion to look at options for allowing questions from the public at Council meeting is part of that transparency. If the Council Procedure Bylaw is amended to allow questions from the public, that will provide the public with another avenue to communicate with their elected representatives.

This is the first in a series of exclusive articles looking at how City Council works, the various roles of council members, and the importance of the work they do on behalf of the community.