Town council briefs: setting boundaries between admin and council and CAO rules, tax penalty bylaw and $30,000 going to new riverfront plan.
At its June 21 meeting, the Town of Athabasca's council passed a second reading a bylaw to amend and update the current chief administrative officer bylaw, with Councillors Tanu Evans, Joanne Peckham, Shelly Gurba and Nichole Adams voting in favour.
Town CAO Josh Pyrcz said the current bylaw is outdated and confuses boundaries between administration and council.
“We're trying to bring it up to speed, and we're actually trying to set expectations, ” Pyrcz said. “This bylaw allows us to say very certainly what will come to this table and what won't come to this table. ”
Mayor Roger Morrill questioned new powers the update would give the CAO, including the ability to spend up to $50,000 not in the approved budget in case of emergency, as well as the ability to retain, instruct and pay for outside legal counsel up to $20,000 - an amount double that of the town's current legal budget.
Pyrcz said the town's practice has been to allow a ceiling of $10,000.
“We should be raising the budget next year to ensure that we are in fact covering off what we've seen over the last two years, which is an increase in legal fees, ” Pyrcz said.
Morrill also said that after consulting Municipal Affairs, he was also concerned about the constitutionality of placing “petitionable positions, ” like that of development officer, under the delegation authority of CAO.
“Looking at the legal opinion we received and knowing the origins of the draft, we have no issues whatsoever with that, ” Pyrcz said. “In fact, that would be the most proper and best practice for what we're doing. Council delegates their authority to one individual who is their employee and that's me. I then, therefore, delegate authority out to those individuals in the organization. ”
Coun. Tim Verhagehe said he could not support the bylaw, questioning the section about legal spending.
“In the past, I feel that our CAO got some legal opinions on me, ” he said. “All legal opinions were supposed to come back to council table for a motion of council passed previously. Our CAO did provide a response as to my question about why two legal opinions were given on me - which responses I disagreed with completely - and so this whole bylaw I cannot support. ”
Peckham made a motion to pass third reading, however, it was defeated with Verhaeghe, Evans, Morrill and Coun. Steven Schafer voting against it.
Tax penalty bylaw
Town council passed a first reading to update the tax rate bylaw, changing the due date from 41 days after notices are sent out to June 30 every year.
“What this is doing is it is setting a date, ” Boyko said. “It's been common that June 30 is our deadline. It will allow councillors and administration to give early notice to the taxpayers in years that they have that information ready and it just gives some solidity. ”
The penalty rate will remain at 12 per cent, coming into effect on July 1 every year.
“I think the onus will be on admin and council to get notices out on time, ” Coun. Steve Schafer said.
This will be the first update to the bylaw since 1991. Currently, it references the Municipal Taxation Act, which was repealed and replaced by the MGA in 1995. Updates will reflect this change.
Riverfront design
Town council voted in favour of allocating $30,000 toward riverfront design for a new Riverfront Plan (RFP) at the June 7 meeting.
Mike Gismondi and Brian Hall, two public members of the Riverfront Design Review committee, came to council as a delegation.
“We came to talk to you around the issue of spending our budget on a landscape architect to help us to complete the next stage of work at the Riverfront, ” Gismondi said.
At the May 3 meeting, Morrill, Evans and Adams voted against and defeated a motion by Coun. Shelly Gurba to accept a recommendation from the committee to appoint a landscape architect to redo the 1996 design plan.
“We spent a number of hours arriving at this decision as a subcommittee so it was surprising to be trumped at the council level when you'd approved our budget and you said, ‘Here's your budget, go do something with it,' ” Gismondi said.
He said that over the past 20 years, the committee had made enough amendments and accommodations to the original plan to warrant a redesign.
The motion passed with Gurba, Peckham, Verhaeghe, Morrill and Schaefer in favour.
“One of the reasons we had said no to this was economic times but also with (Alberta)TrailNet, there's some uncertainties as to what's going on, ” Morrill said. “That has been addressed by the delegations. ”
