ATHABASCA — There are many subtleties to reviewing and passing legislation including that first reading must be passed before changes can be made to a policy or bylaw.
If a bylaw or policy is tagged to be revised, typically the lion's share of the changes are done and reviewed at the second reading with minor changes before going to third reading and becoming official, but that’s not how it’s happening for a code of conduct bylaw with Athabasca County.
“Before we make the motion to go to third reading,” said Coun. Tracy Holland. “Section 4, it wasn’t written quite as intended.”
She said she rewrote the entire section the night before, separating the reeve and deputy reeve duties and adding in a new section for deputy reeve.
“It was intended to kind of follow the (Municipal Government Act) so, No. 4 would just strictly be reeve duties, separating the deputy reeve duties to maybe make a Section 5 and then of course, subsequently ... six, seven, and eight would be changed,” she said.
Reeve Brian Hall interjected however and suggested it might be better to put the changes over since no one would have had time to read them.
“If you have a substantive amendment that you’d like to propose what I wonder is, because I think nobody has seen it, it would be maybe reasonable for you to propose it and for someone to propose that we table it to the next meeting,” said Hall.
Holland offered to read the document, a full page of changes, but Hall suggested councillors have the chance to read it themselves once it is tabled.
“From what I see, you’ve got a full page of amendments and I think that’s the kind of thing that we should have more than hearing it and making a decision,” he said.
Hall did suggest moving the third reading with the proposed amendments so the debate could take place and the process could be ready for the next meeting, but it was simply postponed.
The proposed changes were based on input after the second reading which had Section 4.0 describing both the reeve and deputy reeve duties with six new clauses added for further detail.
In the amendment proposed by Holland it would separate reeve and deputy reeve duties and replace the six new clauses with two different ones for reeve and renumbering Section 5 for the deputy reeve duties with three different clauses then re-numbering the remainder of the document accordingly.
When Holland was asked to speak about the amendments in an email from the Athabasca Advocate July 12, she deferred to the reeve.
“Thank you so much for your e-mail and inquiry. I will forward this to reeve Hall to respond to as he is our council’s spokesperson,” said Holland. “Just for clarity I did not introduce any new amendments, I just provided a suggestion on clearer wording of what was existing.”
However, the changes are amendments, as clarified by Hall.
“The amendment proposed was to reformat the content of Section 4 to clarify the duties of the reeve and deputy reeve separately,” he said in a July 12 e-mail. “Because of the length of the text I proposed to Coun. Holland that it may benefit everyone to see the text before voting on third and final reading and council agreed.”
Holland eventually explained her reasoning for making the changes at third reading, “However, please note that I will still forward all future media requests to the appropriate individuals as per our Council Code of Conduct.”
She said she had proposed Section 4 be amended at the first reading, so it aligned with the MGA, but it wasn’t how she envisioned it to be, so she did it herself and brought it back.
“Upon my review of, and in discussion with reeve Hall, the July 12 agenda item 6.1, Section 4 amendments in proposed Bylaw 012-2022, seemed a bit confusing,” said Holland. “I suspect the reformatted content will be in an upcoming agenda soon.”
