Council Time - Jan 1 to Jan 31, 2010

One more council time update while I'm at it. January was a bit of a slow month as everything seems to take a bit of time to get rolling in the new year. Check out Sept of 2009 here and all posts on the subject here.

The standard council time disclaimer: I'm not including; time spent reading agendas, doing research, travelling to and from meetings or answering resident's phone calls & emails. Those add up too but again they are really tough to measure. So, if you think I might be overstating how much time something took or that the amount of time spent isn't really all that onerous please keep these "unmeasureables" in mind - they add up and this probably understates the time that one needs to commit to council.

Council Time - Sept 1 to Sept 30, 2009

It's been a while since my last post looking at how much time being an alderman actually requires. (See all previous posts HERE) I was reminded to take a look again when the committee looking at council pay made a request looking for info. They want to know how much time council members commit to the various committee and events as part of the job. I passed on the link to my previous posts but also did up two new time charts that are a little more recent.

So, here's the first of those two new council time updates, my time in meetings and events from September 1st to 30th, 2009. As I say every time; please take this only as a rough estimate of time spent on things that I have physically attended.

Also, I'm not including; time spent reading agendas, doing research, travelling to and from meetings or answering resident's phone calls & emails. Those add up too but again they are really tough to measure. For example a meeting might last for an hour but what would you suggest getting there and back to home (where I work) adds? I'm not sure, I try to be early for meetings so that's another 10 minutes and I probably leave home another 10 minutes before that. It probably takes another 10 to get back home afterwards so a 1 hour meeting probably takes more like 1.5 hours out of my day. What do you think?

Easing into '09 Blogging

Ok, ok.. I'm back.

It's been quite a while since the last post, I hope everyone out there had a great time over the holidays! I think it's going to take a little time for me to get back in to the swing of regular posts so you'll have to excuse me if this post seems a little dis-jointed, let's just say I'm easing my way in to my 2009 blogging.

Tonight is our first full council meeting since December 15th and although things did slow down quite a bit over the holidays, there have still been meetings to go to. In fact, we ran right up to the holidays with a three hour meeting with the County of GP on December 23rd! My last meeting of 2008 was an Arctic Winter Games host society meeting on December 30th and the first meeting of '09 was on the 5th. Actually, looking back last week had 5 council related appointments and this week has 8 - so I guess we're fully back in the swing of things!

Speaking of being fully in the swing of thing; preparations for the Arctic Winter Games are well under way. If you want to keep up with the latest AWG happenings (no, not that AWG, I'm talking about this AWG) there is now an Arctic Winter Games blog to follow and you'll notice I've added the latest AWG news headlines to the right side of this blog.

In addition to the latest news, the AWG Blog has links to additional Arctic Winter Games resources and will play host to some special looks at the unique character of these games. It also has a handy feature that allows you to sign up to receive free email updates when ever the site is updated. (my blog also has the same feature, it's just over there on the right and side....)

Welcome to 2009!

Council Time - Oct 16 to Nov 15, 2008

Here's where I spent my time in meetings and events from October 16th to November 15th of this year.

As I say every time; please take this only as a rough estimate of time spent on things that I have physically attended . Some of these may have taken slightly less or slightly more time.

Also, I'm not including; time spent reading agendas, doing research, travelling to and from meetings or answering resident's phone calls & emails. Those add up too but again they are really tough to measure. For example I didn't include the 8 hours it took for me to drive to Westlock and back again. So, if you think I might be overstating how much time something took or that the amount of time spent isn't really all that onerous please keep these "unmeasureables" in mind - they add up.

Council Time - Sept 16 to Oct 15, 2008

One of the questions that I get asked about city council pretty frequently is: "How much time does it take to serve on council?"

It's a tough question to answer but I had started to make what I thought would be regular postings on the topic back this spring. Well, as things come and go I forgot to keep up with it until this great post from Leslie in Peace River reminded me that it's a question people might be interested in.

As I said back when I first posted on the topic; it's difficult to say exactly how much time being on council takes. That's mainly because it depends on how much the individual council member chooses to put in to the job. You can attend information sessions or conferences to learn about new ideas that you can bring back to the council table or you can choose not to. You can attend at community events, either as the official council rep who brings greetings or just to talk to different groups of people to see what is happening with different sectors of the community .... or you can choose not to.

As I also mentioned before you can't choose to ignore is reading. There is a lot of reading; background information and agendas are a part of practically every city meeting but this is still difficult to capture. For example "Did I spend a couple hours reading those agendas for the up coming week or was it only 15 minutes this time around?" One of the other things I find I'm doing more and more often is researching ideas and best practices from other places, again that time is tough to measure.

Now, as I've said it's tough to measure everything so please; take this only as a rough estimate of things that I have physically attended at. Some things may have taken slightly less or slightly more time. Also, I'm not including; time spent reading agendas, doing research, travelling to and from meetings or answering resident's phone calls & emails. Those add up too but again they are really tough to measure. So, if you think I might be overstating how much time something took or that the amount of time spent isn't really all that onerous please keep these "unmeasureables" in mind - they add up.

For reference my previous posts on the topic are:
Oct 15th to Nov 15th, 2007
Nov 16th to Dec 15th, 2007

And here is Sept 16th to Oct 15th, 2008:

Friday Afternoon - Agenda Day

Every Friday council members pop in to city hall to pick up their meeting agenda packages for the following week. The packages are usually ready by about noon so when there is a council meeting on the following Monday that give council members approximately 3 twenty-four hour days to read up on everything they'll see Monday at 7:00pm. The packages also include any mail or faxes that have been sent to council as well as agendas for committee meetings.

This week's stack of agendas was particularly thick as you can see below. The thickest of the documents is the agenda for Monday night's council meeting (agenda pdf). Most of it's heft is due to the public hearings on things like the South Avondale Area Redevelopment Plan, and West Gate Outline Plan.



So, aside from popping by the Lions Kid's Day in the Park and bringing greetings on behalf of the mayor to the Aboriginal Headstart Program wrap up today I also have a little reading ahead of me this weekend!

Council Time - Nov 16 to Dec 15, 2007

Here's the second in my posts answering the question: How much time does being an alderman take?

You can find all of these post under the label "Council Time" or by clicking here.

I mentioned in the first post that it's tough to measure everything so again, please take this only as a rough estimate of things that I have physically attended at. Some things may have taken slightly less or slightly more time. Also, I'm not including; time spent reading agendas, travelling to and from meetings or answering resident's phone calls or emails. Those add up too but again they are really tough to measure.


Through this month you can see how the budget discussions took a huge chunk of time right at the start of this term. This won't happen every year because we run a 3 year budget here in Grande Prairie. Next time we look at budget it will be much shorter because it will essentially be a review where we address olny the things that may have changed from our plan set in the first year.

Also you'll see the AUMA conference took a couple of days. That was down in Edmonton this year and if you'd like to see the posts I made from the conference they are here.

Council Time - Oct 15 to Nov 15, 2007

One of the questions that I get asked about city council pretty frequently is: "How much time does it take to serve on council?"

It's a tough question to answer because it depends on how much the individual council member chooses to put in. You can attend information sessions or conferences to learn about new ideas that you can bring back to the council table or you can choose not to. You can attend at community events, either as the official council rep who brings greetings or just to talk to different groups of people to see what is happening with different sectors of the community .... or you can choose not to.

One thing you can't choose to ignore is reading. There is a lot of reading; background information and agendas are a part of practically every city meeting but this is still difficult to capture. For example "Did I spend a couple hours reading those agendas for the up coming week or was it only 15 minutes this time around?"

Well, with all these variations it's tough to accurately measure the amount of time it takes to serve on council ... but I'm not going to let that stop me from trying! I'm going to start regularly posting the amount of time I've spent on council business in the past month. I'll do a posting somewhere after the 16th of each month detailing what I went to and approximately how long it took, in minutes.

Now, as I've said it's tough to measure everything so please; take this only as a rough estimate of things that I have physically attended at. Some things may have taken slightly less or slightly more time. Also, I'm not including; time spent reading agendas, travelling to and from meetings or answering resident's phone calls or emails. Those add up too but again they are really tough to measure. So, if you think I might be overstating how much time something took please keep these "unmeasureables" in mind.

Obviously I have some catching up to do from the start of this term so I'll do a couple of these posts this week until I'm up to date. So, with out further ado, here's an accounting of how much time being on council takes...

March 15th to November 15th, 2007

So there you go, council took just under 56 hours in the first month after the election.

You'll be able to find posts like this under the label "Council Time"