Our City Hall desk starts with the agenda, not the press release
How the Standard intends to cover council: read the agenda first, attend the vote, report the decision — and keep the record straight afterwards.
Council coverage goes wrong in a predictable way: it starts from what an office announces rather than from what the meeting decides. This desk commits to working the other way around — agendas and staff reports first, the vote as it happened, and the follow-through months later when the decision meets the ground.
We will tell you where a number comes from every time we print one. When we summarize a debate, the full record it came from will be identified so you can check our reading against it.
Watching something at City Hall you think the city should know about? The desk reads everything sent to tips@surreystandard.ca.