A Kamloops Councillor who is part of the new select committee tasked with looking at the make up of standing committees could take between three to four months to complete its work.

“I’m hoping when I get out of here, I don’t get a phone call saying ‘what were you thinking that we can get this done in this time frame,’ but I like to think we can,” Margot Middleton said on the NL Morning News.

“I like to think that if we just dig in and get the work done, we can get this moving forward.”

Middleton is one of four elected officials on the committee that will take a deep dive into the terms of reference for all five standing committees – Civic Operations, Community and Protective Services, Community Relations and Reconciliation, Development and Sustainability, and Finance.

She will be joined by Mayor Reid Hamer-Jackson and Councillors Nancy Bepple and Mike O’Reilly, who will serve as chair.

“What we are really looking at is the terms of reference for those standing committees and how we can modify and alter them to suit all councillors and the requirements of the city, keeping in mind the community charter, and what is sort of expected and understood to be the best practice,” Middleton said.

The committee was established March 21, after Kamloops council voted 8-1 to pause all standing committees pending a review of the terms of reference.

That vote came following a decision by Hamer-Jackson to remove several councillors as chairs and named members of the community – some with personal connections to him – as their replacements. Those appointments have since been rescinded by the mayor, though he’s hinted it is a temporary move.

“I think that likely in my opinion, [we] should allow for some unelected representation on those committees,” Middleton said. “But [we are going to look at] what is the best process, how do we vet who is going to come onto those committees, how do we protect our code of conduct, city staff, and councillors from sort of an outside advisor, shall we say, coming in?”

Put simply, Middleton says the select committee will look at implementing a series of checks and balances to address issues if it were to come up.

“Our expectation is that anybody coming on is going to have a lot personal integrity and is not going to suddenly start spouting up about this, that, and the other thing, and not maintaining confidentiality, but we didn’t really have a mechanism in that place that if that is breached, how do you handle it?” she added.

At present, members of the public serve on Engagement Groups, which were established to feed suggestions through to council-only committees, which in turn would send things to city council for a vote.

City staff have said that the business of the City will continue to progress through Committee of the Whole – which is comprised of the mayor and council – and regular Council meetings, both of which could increase in frequency and length given the lack of standing committees.

“City staff spend a lot of time putting together information to bring to council for decision to be made upon  and we owe it to them to spend time reviewing it,” Middleton said. “They put a lot of work into it and if we are just to come in and look at our watches and say, ‘sorry folks we’re out of time, thanks for your report. Bye,’ it doesn’t do justice to that work that staff do or to delegations that come to the city.”

“We need to have adequate time to review what they’re presenting and make our decisions, so I agree, we want to get back to the standing committees so that we aren’t consuming all our time in committee of the whole.”