A Kamloops councillor is asking if city council meetings can be moved to the evenings.

Dale Bass has put forward a motion asking staff to look into the matter.

She says meetings during the day are a challenge to get to for people with jobs in the day-time hours.

“I just think that we can do a better job at making council meetings accessible to the public. The majority of people work during the day, they can’t make it to a meeting. Younger people can’t really make a decision to run for council because they have day jobs,” Bass says.

“We start our day at 9 o’clock. If I had a day job, I might not be able to make it to that 9 o’clock meeting, that 10 o’clock meeting, that noon meeting or that 1:30 meeting. That’s number one. Number two, during the childcare discussion I had lots of parents saying ‘I wish I could come to council to tell you how desperately I need daycare,’ but they couldn’t because they have day jobs. And the childcare operators wanted to come to council and say ‘oh my God, we need more daycare spaces,’ but they couldn’t because they were at work taking care of the kids.”

Bass also points out many other B.C. municipalities do evening council meetings including Kelowna, Prince George, Vancouver and Victoria.

Council will decide at its March 5 meeting whether or not to proceed with the notice of motion from Bass.

“I asked for a report because there obviously financial implications, there are staffing implications. And I also wanted to start the discussion because we haven’t had it in years,” she says. “But I really think if we truly are going to be engaged with our community, we have to make decisions that make it better for everybody to be involved.”