Duane Hicks
Town council will be keeping term limits at eight years for its various boards and committees, but will make exceptions if there’s not applicants to fill vacancies.
Council amended the relevant bylaw during its meeting last night, stating it has the authority to forgo the enforcement of term limits on a specific board or committee if an insufficient number or unsuitable applications are received.
The term limit for nearly all council-appointed boards and committees will remain eight-consecutive years, and under normal circumstances an individual will be ineligible to serve longer than that.
But if the town does not get enough applicants to fill the seats on a certain board or committee, council may make an exception and appoint an applicant who already has served eight-consecutive years.
Coun. Ken Perry said he is satisfied with the amendment to the bylaw.
“We didn’t amend the bylaw very much,” he noted.
“We clarified it more than amended it because it always said that you could serve a certain amount of time and then had to excuse yourself for at least a year or a term.”
Coun. Perry said the bylaw changed in 2010 from nine years to eight years because council terms had changed from three years to four years in length.
The town sometimes has had problems getting sufficient applicants to fill its boards and committees.
Earlier this fall, council reviewed its term limit policy and considered getting rid them altogether in order to make it easier to fill all board and committee vacancies, but then reconsidered that notion.
“We’ve since amended it so that we can make sure that if there’s not enough people coming forward to serve on a committee . . . we can at least approach the people that were there before to apply on a second go-around and get them in there,” Coun. Perry explained.
“If they apply at the same time as everybody else, and there’s not enough, they would be considered as well at the time of the initial appointments to the committees,” he added.
Coun. Perry said he’s happy to see many people put their names forth for town boards and committees after the recent call for applicants.
“There’s not too many committees we aren’t going to fill right off the bat,” he remarked.
Committee appointments will be announced at the council meeting this Monday (Dec. 1).
Also last night, council honoured “Citizen of the Year” Dr. Brian Johnstone with a plaque.
Council also bid farewell to outgoing councillors Rick Wiedenhoeft and Andrew Hallikas, who served for the past 11 and eight years, respectively.
