ORANGE councillors have voted to drop the monthly meeting schedule adopted at their first meeting in September, despite being only one month into a three-month trial.
The councillors spent 45 minutes discussing and debating the change at an extraordinary meeting last week, before deciding to split council into a committee meeting and ordinary meeting, and trial Tuesday as the new meeting day.
By comparison, it only took councillors 40 minutes to divvy up the council’s 32 committees.
The council previously held fortnightly ordinary meetings on a Thursday and Sustainable Development Committee (SDC) meetings on Monday, when councillors decide on planning and development applications.
After only one round of meetings under the new monthly system, councillors have again changed their minds and will now meet twice a month on a Tuesday - for all committees in the first week and ordinary meetings in the third week.
But some councillors still have reservations about the change.
Cr Chris Gryllis said the previous system, where all committees except for SDC were held on the same night as the ordinary meetings, had always worked perfectly.
Following suggestions from Cr Reg Kidd that last week’s extraordinary meeting should be kept informal, Cr Gryllis said it was important to maintain order and the formalities of a council meeting.
“I’m not against progress but we can’t relax it any more,” he said.
“We should run it in a very disciplined and orderly manner otherwise it gets out of control.”
Committee meetings will start at 5:15pm on the first Tuesday of the month and will cover SDC, finance, environment and economic development, infrastructure and community services.
A fortnight later on the third Tuesday, council will hold the ordinary meetings with a public forum at the start, and other business and reports into tenders.