This Week at City Hall

We've a new council (well, 20 per cent new, anyway) so they won't be meeting publicly this week. Neither will any of the committees. Replacements will need to be found for Jerry Flegel on the Regina Planning Commission and for Bill Gray on the Transit Advisory Board.

Also, new councillors, John Findura and Chris Szarka, will be getting a chance to learn the ropes.

I did an interview with City Clerk, Joni Swidnicki, before the election about what a new council means to her department. So, in lieu of our usual schedule of city hall happenings, here's the Q&A on new councillor orientation...

ME: After the election, there must be an awkward transition phase for new councillors where they’re learning the ropes and learning how to interact with the clerk’s office and things like that...

SWIDNICKI: Yep. There is. There’s certainly a learning curve. We do provide an orientation and that depends to a large degree on how much of a turnover there is on the council. If it’s a case of one or two people then it’s as easy to do it almost on a one on one basis [rather than] have the full council sit for the stuff.

But we will do an orientation session. It’s probably almost a day long. We cover off such things as good governance and protocol, conflict of interest and planning. Planning is probably one of the biggest things that councillors kind of have to have an understanding of, so there will probably be an orientation on that as well.