County passes updates to procedure bylaw

By John Watson Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

Wheatland County council passed, and will be amending bylaw 2024-23, being an updated procedure bylaw, discussed during the July 2, regular meeting of council.

The bylaw was presented first to the Committee of the Whole, June 18. During this review, it was advised that the bylaw conflicted with section 49 of the existing procedure bylaw. 

In order to have both documents in alignment, administration had suggested amendments to Section 49 of the Procedure Bylaw. 

“This was done to amend Section 49 of the procedure bylaw and that is just to update the Committee of the Whole section,” said Brian Henderson, who presented the amendment on behalf of county administration. “That is the only thing that was updated in the procedure bylaw … that amendment is relatively straightforward and it does align with the other bylaw for the public presentation committee.”

Reeve Amber Link, following the passing of first reading of the amendment, inquired regarding an annotation in the bylaw that meetings would be posted to the county’s website, or if it is simply intended that meetings will be publicly accessible online, such as through the county’s YouTube channel, which currently hosts meeting recordings. 

Link added she felt sections 134 and 139 of the bylaws as presented stated very similar clauses and as such, one of which may have been redundant. 

“This did come up at a previous council meeting; the clause references under ‘amending motions,’ that there can only be one amending motion and from my understanding of the bylaw, I did not understand that to mean, or at least past process had not been that there could only be one amending motion on a resolution,” said Link. “I had interpreted that to mean there could only be one amending motion at a time, and then there is a clause below that, that says all amending motions are debatable.”

As council had expressed interest in potentially making several amendments to the bylaw, it was suggested that the draft be sent back to be reviewed in a committee of the whole meeting, which would take place Aug. 20, prior to returning to council.

Second and third readings of the new procedure bylaw were held and carried during the July 2, regular meeting of council. Additionally, administration was directed to bring the proposed changes back to a committee of the whole meeting. 

More information about the bylaw, as well as the proposed amendments is publicly available via the county’s public meeting agenda for the July 2 meeting.