After years of seeing a lack of youth involvement in municipal affairs, one young Merrittonian is taking matters into his own hands.

Marius Auer presented his idea to start a youth advisory committee, aimed at injecting a youthful view into city business, at a regular meeting on March 12.

“The committee would provide a youth perspective on issues and carry out any youth-related requests from council such as surveys or research among youth,” he said.

Auer’s vision centres around a group of up to 10 youth, aged 13 to 19 working with a member of council to enhance youth understanding and participation in local government.

He’d also like to work with the school district to develop an academic credit aspect of the program.

Mayor Linda Brown and members of council expressed interest in moving forward with a youth program on Tuesday’s meeting.

As Auer’s proposal was simply a presentation and not an item for council to vote on, details of the plan could change.

“I think there is great potential,” Coun. Mike Bhangu said.

Brown said she is “willing to give it a good try,” noting she would like to see a couple tweaks to the plan, including running it as a council committee and extending the age group to ages 16 to 24.