City Hall Not Returning To Regular Hours For At Least A Month
If you were hoping City Hall would extend their presently reduced hours or return to their regular hours of being open to the public you are going to have to wait awhile longer.
At their February 16th regular Council meeting Councillor Heather Eby asked Administration when City Hall would open its doors past the present restricted hours of 11 am to 3 pm.
“When will the hours of City Hall be extended again? It is getting to be a bit tricky and anyways just wondering when will City Hall hours be extended back to normal?” Councillor Eby asked.
City manager Jim Puffalt said the restricted hours would be relaxed based upon what the Province does.
“I think we are probably, depending upon the provincial guidance as to restrictions and those were extended to another month. It’s month to month at this time,” Puffalt said.
Councillor Eby said she could not see why City Hall was not open for longer hours at the present time.
“I don’t fully understand why that makes a difference to how long City Hall can be open to the Public so people can come and pay their business licenses or whatever. I don’t understand about that,” she said.
During the post meeting media scrum Mayor Fraser Tolmie was asked by MJ Independent the same question asked by Councillor Eby as it is one of the major concerns our readers had been asking about.
Mayor Tolmie repeated the response by the city manager that once the restrictions are lifted by the Province then the City will look at returning City Hall back to its regular hours.
The restrictions on their hours of operation were instituted in response to the Province’s declared State of Emergency because of the COVID - 19 pandemic. Previous to the pandemic City Hall was open to the public from 8:15 am to 5 pm on Monday to Friday.
Not only do you have to go through a health and temperature check before entering City Hall access is restricted for certain offices and there is also a limit as to how many people can be in any area of the building.