Petrolia councillors will have a little more time to campaign for the Oct. 24th municipal election.

Council Monday approved a motion by Mayor Brad Loosley to cancel the final two council meetings before the election.

The mayor explained his suggestion saying “it is felt that you don’t want to get into committing the new council (to projects). The other is that it also gives the town staff time to prepare for the election.”

It wasn’t clear if town staff had asked for the extra time for the election, however the electronic vote has been in the planning stages for months.

Around Lambton County, municipal councils will continue to meet until the election.

Council now won’t meet again until Nov. 14. Clerk Mandi Pearson says the final meeting of council will be followed the next day by the swearing in of the new Petrolia council in a largely ceremonial meeting.

Just one councillor voted against the idea; Joel Field.

If there is new business which needs to be dealt with, the motion allows the mayor to call a special meeting.

Ironically, before the motion passed, Loosley acknowledged the candidates for council who were in the audience at the meeting and suggested it would be good for the remaining candidates to take in a council meeting before the election.

One of the items which was kicked to the curb at the last meeting of council was a motion from Councillor Don Welten to start a study on development charges. Welten has spoken in favour of the fees for development saying it will help pay for future costs such as more parks and fire services.

The study needed to figure out just how much money should be collected when new homes are built is extensive and council has heard in the past that it will take at least a year to implement the charges once council agrees to move ahead with a study.

Field asked council to approve the $24,000 study, but no other councillors agreed with the idea. Mayor Loosley suggested passing the motion would be “circumventing the new council” and the decision could be made after the new council is elected.

Beginning the study did not commit the town to implementing the fees.

Councillors did get a commitment from CAO Rick Charlebois to give a better picture of staffing in the future.

Councillors had earlier asked the CAO to adopt an attrition management plan to reduce the number of employees at town hall.

Charlebois in a report to council said it was the CAO’s job to manage hiring not council’s and seemed to suggest the councillors desire to reduce the number of town employees was stepping into that territory.

Instead, Charlebois committed to providing council “with a yearly report on any staffing action taken by me in the previous year as part of the annual draft budget process.

“However, if I were to seek additional positions (caused by land development growth for example an additional public works employee), I would bring this to council seeking approval during the annual budget process to staff such positions in the following fiscal year.”

Both Councillor Wade Deighton and Grant Purdy said it was not their intention to take control of the process but to put in place an attrition plan that would “give the council a little more accountability to what is actually happening.”