Using time effectively at community council meetings

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For many people, taking part in the work of community councils involves the sacrifice of valuable time. On the one hand, volunteers want to be active in the affairs of the community, and on the other, they want to make sure that they can enjoy their free time.

Achieving this balance takes a disciplined approach to the use of time. This is particularly important when it comes to meetings. Unproductive meetings can be damaging for community councils, particularly where talkers are more interested in their personal agendas than the meeting agenda.

Another problem that some community councils have acknowledged is that they find it very difficult to deal with matters that are not practical issues such as grass cutting or potholes in the road. While these are an important part of the work of a community council there are other matters, which may deliver less tangible results in the short term, but which can have a major impact on the community in the longer run. It is important that matters of strategic importance to communities are not overlooked by placing too much emphasis on the nuts and bolts issues.

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Setting priorities
The way to overcome this problem is to think in terms of priorities and to encourage other members of the community council to think likewise. Try to be clear about which issues are most important for your community and to allocate most time to them. This may mean choosing between the short term things like potholes, and the longer term matters such as contributing to the development of government policy. Remember that important issues should not be set aside because other issues appear more urgent.

A good way to get through important complex issues is to break them down into chunks and deal with them one by one over a series of meetings. Another approach would be to split up the task and allocate responsibility for bits of the task to different individuals or groups. Some community councils use watching briefs to give individual community council members with specific skills, knowledge or experience the role of watching out for issues in a specific area of interest.

Unless you are elected to the chair you may not be able to bring much influence to bear on the way business is conducted in your community council. What you can do however, is to demonstrate by your own example that you are thinking in terms of priorities and using your own time effectively.

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