By Jeremy Cook
The opening prayer could be removed from the Southern Downs Regional Council’s official meeting minutes under a raft of proposed changes slated to align meetings with the Queensland government’s latest “best practice” model.
Under the proposal, which was discussed briefly at a SDRC meeting in May, “any prayer or similar statement will occur prior to the opening” of a meeting.
It would end an eight year practice of having the prayer officially included in meeting agendas, following its introduction by the council under Mayor Tracy Dobie in 2016.
The proposals are expected to be tabled for discussion at the next council meeting in June.
Mayor Melissa Hamilton said the “underlying proposal” from council staff was to adopt the state government’s “best practice” model for meeting procedures which was last updated in March.
“When the state updates those standing orders to best practice from time to time, we will just be able to stay on top of that,” Cr Hamilton said.
She said the current proposal was to say the prayer “immediately” before the meeting opens but not have it officially minuted.
“The discussion so far with council is how do we continue to incorporate [the prayer] in what we do,” Cr Hamilton said.
“The proposal is to have it immediately before we open the meeting so that it is still part of what we do when sit and meet,” Cr Hamilton said.
“It would be prior to the start of the official minuted meeting which is probably where it should be anyway.
The state government’s model outlines a set of procedures for councils to adopt “to ensure all” local government principles are reflected in its meetings.
It is not intended to “deal with all aspects of meeting conduct but only those required to strengthen public confidence in local government” such as councillor conduct, conflict of interests, loss of quorum and closed meetings.
Council chief executive Dave Burges said a discussion paper will be circulated at the next meeting for councillors to discuss the proposals and decide on each meeting’s “order of business”.
Other current proposals include also moving public participation to before meetings open, clarifying when “en bloc” voting is allowed and removing general business.
Personal statements given by councillors would also be moved to the end of meetings, but still included in the minutes, though discussion of the statements themselves would be removed.
Cr Hamilton said changes could be divided into two categories.
“One is retaining some parts of the prior meeting policy [which] councillors perceive to be useful and I think that’s the ‘en bloc’ voting,” she said.
“Then there’s other proposals that aren’t in the current meeting policy, aren’t in the state government one, but that one or more people have proposed.”
Cr Hamilton said she hoped an updated meeting policy could be adopted at the next council meeting in Stanthorpe on 19 June.
