Saint John City Hall – Killen, Titus have worst attendance
Today’s Telegraph-Journal had a great chart that detailed the number of meetings each Councillor has missed:
| Councillor | Regular meetings | Special meetings | Total | % Missed |
| Carl Killen | 9 | 13 | 22 | 24% |
| Chris Titus | 4 | 12 | 17 | 18% |
| Peter McGuire | 0 | 11 | 11 | 12% |
| Bill Farren | 3 | 7 | 10 | 11% |
| Joe Mott | 4 | 3 | 7 | 8% |
| Donnie Snook | 2 | 5 | 7 | 8% |
| Gary Sullivan | 2 | 5 | 7 | 8% |
| Patty Higgins** | 2 | 4 | 6 | 7% |
| Ivan Court | 2 | 2 | 4 | 4% |
| Bruce Court | 2 | 1 | 3 | 3% |
| Stephen Chase | 2 | 0 | 2 | 2% |
** Councillor Higgins missed more meetings than indicated on the graph. She was sworn in on July 21, 2008, more than a month after council took office because she’d taken part in a run-off vote.
Another article went into a little more detail on the stats – it was titled: Wherefor art thou Carl?
Killen reacted with surprise to the findings, but insisted he had a good excuse for all the no-shows.
“Every single council meeting I’ve missed has either been a reason associated with work, volunteer stuff or, in the case of the summer, two council meetings missed because I was away on vacation.”
Despite being apprised of his absenteeism, the councillor said he wouldn’t do anything to improve future attendance.
While Killen’s attendance isn’t very impressive, I do believe that there are too many meetings for all of the Councillors.
They shouldn’t be spending all of their time in meetings.
I think the bulk of their time should be dealing with their constituents – listening to concerns, following up on inquiries, and working with the local people to solve problems.
We have a city manager and a large staff at city hall – they should be doing the work, and Council should be providing direction and making the final approvals.
What do you think?
They could move to a standing committee system which would require much less time and fewer meetings overall.
Oh, wait…
They already shot that idea down.
Maybe they’ve been running practice sessions in case the swine flu hits and only some of them survive? Seriously, if anyone in private industry missed this many executive meetings, they’d be fired for absenteeism. WHEN OH WHEN OH WHEN will any of these people behave like this is a real job with real accountability and real consequences for the shareholders, we the taxpayers? I watched 7, yes SEVEN police vehicles respond to a single intoxicated pedestrian Monday night on Chesley drive. The 911 operators knew it was one person only. How fiscally sound is it to pay 7 officers to respond to a single drunk and disorderly call? Great service but at the price of losing a West Side fire station? Perhaps if everyone attended the meetings as required, the way money is thrown around would be considered more thoroughly. Oh, wait! That’s right, no one told any of them before they were elected they would be expected to commit to a Monday night meeting on a regular basis. Ok, now I understand.