Councillor Galgay is the chair of the city’s finance committee. Today news broke that the mayor of St. John’s, as well as certain city councillors, did not attend any finance committee meetings during Galgay’s time as chair.

While that sounds terrible, and is, it should be said that boards/councils have committees so that concentrated and specialised subsets of people can meet and discuss specific orders of business, and then bring their ideas to the board/council to rule on.

But Galgay is right, this week, in saying the mayor, and certainly prudent councillors, should be at financial committee meetings: we’re not talking about a volunteer-run nonprofit organisation here — we’re talking about elected officials running a wonderful capital city.

Galgay is getting vocal that his colleagues should consider the budget something council is collectively responsible for. “I say to those members of council who do not attend these meetings, now you have an opportunity to be directly involved in this process, so when the budget is revealed in December, unanimously, council can say we all were part of that process.”