Susan Flowers believes town councillors should be limited to three notices of motion per year so council and the town administration are not sidetracked by one-off issues.

Councillor Flowers brought forward the notice of motion during last night's council meeting and says it stills gives councillors the opportunity to bring forward plenty of their ideas.

"I just think there is so much work to be done," explains Flowers.  "We have a huge agenda for this year, so I don't want to see one person bringing forward everything that comes to mind where others may not get a chance."

"We all ran on certain things during the election and so we just need to be careful to not bring too many things forward too fast. It overwhelms us and it overwhelms the staff."

Limiting it to three motions still leaves the window open for council to deal with 21 of these motions during the course of a year and in a four-year term that amounts to 84 motions. Even if a councillor uses all three of their motions, they could approach other councillors to champion their causes, Flowers points out. 

There has been a flurry of notices of motions in this council's brief four-month life and most have been brought forward by Councillor Morgan Nagel, although he's not alone. With this motion, Patrick Wilson is the lone councillor who hasn't brought one forward.

During meetings with lighter agendas, they have dominated the discussion, particularly the Jan. 22 meeting where a record four motions were discussed.

In January, Mayor Jeff Genung expressed concern over the alarming number of notices of motion coming forward and chalked it up to the eagerness of the new council to seek change and the absence of their first strategic planning session, which has since been held.  At the time, he said there are other ways these matters could be handled without disrupting workflow and without tying up council's agenda.

He also said the council's procedure bylaw, which sets out the council agenda's format, was due for review and expected it to take place sometime this year.