Two rookie councillors will chair a council standing committee beginning in January. Phil Bruckler will take over direction of the Community Services Committee, and Brian McHattie will head the Social and Public Health Committee.

On Monday, councillors accepted a proposal from Dave Braden to give every councillor the opportunity to head one committee for one year of their three year term of office. Braden pointed out that there were five committees and fifteen councillors, so the math allowed everyone to have a turn as chair.

Prior to amalgamation, committee chairs in the regional and some local governments acquired considerable power by holding onto their positions for the full term of council. In the first three years after amalgamation, council operated with only two committees, both including all councillors and both headed by the mayor.

Specialized standing committees were re-established a year ago, and rules set down requiring that the chairs change every year. However, it was expected that some more powerful councillors might simply take over different committees, a possibility that has now been removed.

That means that all the committees will have new chairs starting in January, and that the new committee vice-chairs will be councillors who have not yet held a chairmanship. These vice-chairs will then take charge of their respective committees in 2006.

It also means that the key Strategic Planning and Budgets committee will have five new faces in January, since it is automatically composed of the chairs of the other standing committees. The mayor is designated in the city bylaws to always be the chair of that committee.

Braden also argued that councillors should be permitted to join extra committees without restriction. Although no final decision was made, it appears that change will also be adopted. Braden wants to continue being a member of the Planning committee, a position he obtained, at least temporarily, last summer.

In other decisions, the special council caucus meeting handed out assignments to new councillors Art Samson and Bob Bratina; and re-established the Social and Public Health committee and the Community Services committee as separate entities. The two committees had been temporarily combined after Andrea Horwath and Russ Powers won election to provincial and federal office.

Samson and Bratina will each sit on about a dozen committees, sub-committees, agencies and boards. A consolidated list of committee memberships circulated at the meeting revealed that this is about the average workload per councillor. Only two have less than ten positions - Bernie Morelli with eight, and Margaret McCarthy with five. The full list of memberships is available at
http://www.city.hamilton.on.ca/clerk/agendas-minutes-reports/
committee-of-the-hole/2004/Caucus/
Nov22/boards,%20committees%20motion.pdf, although minor amendments were approved in Monday's meeting.