Effective June 1, Moose Jaw City Council will begin their regular meetings at 4 p.m. as opposed to 5:30. 

Coun. Dawn Luhning made the motion during the May 24 city council meeting to tweak the schedule to avoid downtime. 

Currently, the executive committee meets in the afternoon with public agenda items beginning at 4 p.m. Then the regular council meeting would begin at 5:30. 

“We are tending to waste quite a bit of time in between those meetings and as Coun. (Jamey) Logan said a few weeks ago, and I hope he doesn't mind that I quote this, it's hard to plan backwards. It's hard to do this in an efficient manner and try and manage our time efficiently,” Luhning said. 

Her motion would see the regular council meeting begin at 4 p.m. with the executive committee to follow. 

Concerns were raised that a 4 p.m. start time could interfere with public delegations making it to city council meetings due to work commitments. Luhning noted they haven’t had issues with public delegations with the 4 p.m. start time for the executive committee and, if it doesn’t work, they can always make a motion to change everything back. 

Coun. Logan agreed that, as a businessman, downtime between the two meetings is problematic. 

“Personally, the downtime in between is wasted time for me and, to be quite honest, I just can't afford that hour,” he said. 

Coun. Heather Eby agreed that, as a councillor with another job, she can’t afford the downtime and felt starting at 4 p.m. will not keep them too late. 

“Back in the day, we used to start at 6:30 and sometimes we'd be here until midnight. I like the four o'clock start time and I don't even mind when we start at three or two, but it's when we have 45 minutes in between and then an hour in between. I'm also self-employed so, that's time that I'm not working,” Eby said. 

Moose Jaw’s city council has a history of changing meeting times to try and become more efficient. In 2017, meetings were changed from weekly to twice per month with city council beginning at 5:30 p.m. with the executive committee following. 

The most recent format took effect in December of 2020 to avoid late nights for the councillors and the public. 

The next meeting of Moose Jaw City Council is June 13 at City Hall.