The public will have to wait before they can sit in on an Athabasca Regional Multiplex Society (ARMS) board meeting.
According to both Athabasca Regional Multiplex general manager Dustin Pysyk and ARMS board member Shelly Gurba, the process in changing the board’s bylaw from closed meeting to a public meeting is still going through Service Alberta.
November marks the seventh month since the board voted unanimously for the public meetings on May 9, during their annual general meeting. The board then filed the paperwork for the proposed bylaw change to Service Alberta.
However, Pysyk said Service Alberta returned the paperwork in August because the active directors listed did not match the directors on file, resulting in Pysyk filling out a new directors’ report.
He added because the organizational committees for the both Athabasca’s town council and Athabasca County, the ARMS board decided to wait and make sure there would be no further changes to the members.
“At our last meeting we signed all the paper work and now it’s been sent in so it’s as up to date as possible,” Gurba said.
The bylaw submission was signed on Oct. 24, and submitted shortly after. Gurba and Pysyk said that no timeline has been established for it’s approval from Service Alberta.
“It’s the government you just never know,” Gurba said. “I mean, if they got a backlog then it’s going to go in the order that its been sent in.”
Although the decision has been made to make the meeting public, Pysyk said “until Service Alberta gives us the go ahead we have to stay status quo.”
“It’s because it’s a committee bylaw,” he said. “It’s not like when we vote on a policy change and it comes into effect right away. It’s against societies’ regulations.”
Pysyk said if the public were to sit in on the meetings before approval, the society could face some legal issues with Service Alberta and potentially lose their society status.
“That’s a possibility, but I’m not positive exactly what could happen,” he said. “Given that we’re dealing with some elected officials and a few things I don’t want to put on membership – which is the town and county – in any, for lack of better terms, legal situations we can avoid by just waiting.”
Pysyk said ARMS displays their board meeting minutes on the Multiplex website; however, at the time of deadline, the last meeting minutes posted were from April 18, 2016.
Both Gurba and Pysyk said the board is eagerly awaiting the bylaw change.
“I’m just hoping that this paperwork is processed as soon as possible so that we can have these meetings open,” Gurba said. “Not saying there will be a lot of people attending them, but at least they’ll have the option.”
“It’s not like we’re a secret society,” Pysyk added. “We don’t want people to think that. That’s why everyone on the board agreed to making these meetings open.”
