After 200 years the Corporation of Hamilton is finally opening its doors to the public.

People are invited to attend a members' meeting for the first time this Wednesday.

Announcing the move, City Mayor Charles Gosling said: "During our election campaign we committed to holding open meetings so the residents of Bermuda could see how the Corporation of Hamilton worked, thus providing greater transparency.

"We feel we need to live up to those obligations."

He said: "This will be a historic meeting for the Corporation of Hamilton and for Bermuda, as I believe this will be the first meeting where the members' decisions, comments and deliberations will be made before the public."

The monthly members' meetings discuss various committee reports and their recommendations.

Although the public are welcome on Wednesday, the mayor could not yet confirm whether this will be a monthly occurrence.

Neither will the public be able to comment the open meeting is for the purpose of observing proceedings only. Mr. Gosling said: "This is going to be very much a work in progress moving forward, as we are taking something which has taken place behind closed doors for 200 years now, and we are opening it.

"I can't say the comfort level with any of the board members is completely there, but we recognise this is something we need to do.

"Right now we're doing this first initial one and will look to see how things go, but the hope is we would certainly be opening up regular meetings to the public. It would be my intent in the long term to incorporate the town hall meetings into more of the members' meetings, so the public could present their particular case prior to the members discussing the agenda item and reaching their decision."

He continued: "We wish to get on with the first one to start with and hopefully from this meeting we will see what the response is. Hopefully the response from board members is we will be holding a lot more open board meetings."

The meeting on Wednesday can accommodate 20 members of the public.

Mr. Gosling said the agenda had not yet been confirmed but could include a variety of items from the infrastructure, finance, development, property, staff, legislation and governance committees.

He added such topics may include "any news on the hotel development in Par-la-Ville".

The mayor added: "As far as I know it's still going ahead. There have been revisions to their plans and from what I am led to understand, things are still progressing."

In June, Premier and Tourism Minister Ewart Brown said a St. Regis hotel was planned for the site.

Wednesday will mark the first public meeting to be held in the history of The Corporation of Hamilton.

It will take place in the mayor's parlour at 12.30 p.m.

Last month, the Corporation held the first public town hall meeting at City Hall Theatre.

Mr. Gosling said at the time: "The members of the Corporation of Hamilton and I look forward to having this important dialogue which will be the first of many."

The Royal Gazette's A Right To Know: Giving People Power campaign has been urging the corporation to be more transparent and open its meetings to the public since January 2008.