City Council approves 2027 meeting schedule

It may be more than a month until the calendar changes to 2027, but planning for next year’s City Council meetings is already well underway.

A big piece of that for Lethbridge City Council is providing plenty of notice of when they will meet. On Tuesday, Council approved a new 2027 Council and Community Issues Committee (CIC) calendar (page three).

There are 17 Council meetings and 18 CIC meetings (some across multiple days) scheduled for 2027. Council and CIC meetings, as well as Agenda Review Committee (ARC) meetings will remain on Tuesdays.

The calendar sets meeting start times of 1 p.m. for all Council and CIC meetings, unless otherwise stated, to avoid confusion of a 12:30 p.m. or 1:30 p.m. start. This will provide a consistent time for meetings, which will be easy to remember for Administration, public, media and Council members. The timing will also avoid an impact on lunch hours. These proposed timing changes will require amendments to Bylaw 6250 - Procedure Bylaw. This piece will come to Council on December 15. 

Publication of the 2027 Council and CIC Meeting Calendar: 

• Provides extensive notice increasing transparency, encourages public participation and maintains reliability and confidence in the decision-making process.
• Assists Administration with the scheduling, preparation and management of Council and Committee reports.

The 2027 calendar allows for the following improvements from the 2026 calendar: 

• The time for ARC reviewing a CIC agenda in advance of the meeting is reduced from 14-21 days to only seven days.
• The time from a CIC recommendation to Council adoption is reduced from three weeks to five days.
• The time from ARC to Council adoption, through CIC, is reduced from five weeks to two weeks.
• The above reduction in timelines allows Administration to draft more timely reports and receive decisions faster. This shortens the overall reporting timeline and allows the directions to be carried out in a more expedient manner.
• Council and CIC agendas will continue to be publicly available one week in advance. Individual CIC meeting agendas continue to list information for public participation opportunities.

Additional dates, noted in green, for the CIC Operating Budget have been scheduled, as well as the annual Emergency Advisory Committee meeting in March of 2027. 

For Public Inquiries:  

Call or chat 311 | Monday to Friday, 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.