The Town of La Ronge is leading the way when it comes to adopting a new governance model for town council.
The northern town recently committed to the new policy framework as well as adopted a Council Policy Manual.
The new policy framework is adapted from many private sector models and aims to more clearly defines the roles and responsibilities of town council members.
Chief Administrative Officer Victoria MacDonald says the policy is difficult to explain in general terms, but basically helps make everybody’s job a little easier.
“As a town councillor you are wanting to be involved in municipal government and you want to do a good job to represent the town, but sometimes that is overwhelming when you have to run your day to day life as well,” said MacDonald. “The policy is a great way to have consistency for whomever becomes councillors.”
Basically if council members have any questions on how they should handle a certain situation they can go to the Council Policy Manual and it will guide them in the appropriate direction.
MacDonald says La Ronge is one of a very small number of municipalities in the province that have adopted this new policy framework, but she says more are beginning to see the benefit of a clearly defined governance framework.
“We are really seeing La Ronge and the town council of La Ronge taking it to another level and I think we will be used as an example on how to incorporate that governance policy to a municipal government,” said MacDonald.
MacDonald says they decided to implement the framework because there was a desire from council members to understand their roles a bit better and this new model appeared to be the best fit to accomplish that goal.
“The business of governing and running a municipality is constantly changing, there are new pressures and new opportunities,” said La Ronge Mayor Thomas Sierzycki in a media release. “This tool is adaptable and easily applied.”
La Ronge Council have been working on adopting the policy framework over the past year and MacDonald says it does take time to understand the framework and to see the overall value of it.