Most Athabasca town councillors say they were embarrassed by last Tuesday’s cancelled council meeting, caused when a split council tied on three separate votes to accept the agenda.
“The community will judge us like the bunch of dummies that we are,” councillor Lionel Cherniwchan said. “It just shows you that we’re not all on the same page.”
Three councillors voted against three different motions to accept the agenda, and with one councillor absent, the motions were each defeated due to a tie in votes. With no approved agenda, the meeting was cancelled.
“I don’t understand what the other three councillors were trying to prove with that,” Cherniwchan said.
The first motion to approve the agenda was opposed by councillors Tim and Richard Verhaeghe and George Hawryluk.
Tim Verhaeghe stated at the meeting that he was opposed to a late addition to the proposed agenda, as well as other items that he said he felt could be dealt with by town administration and not necessitate inclusion on the agenda.
“Council takes between 10 to 20 hours a week. That includes all the different committees we are on,” Tim Verhaeghe said in a brief statement provided to the Advocate last Friday.
“What I am trying to do is follow policy and procedure that we have established. In doing so, it will hopefully make us more efficient so that we can better meet the needs of our town.”
Tim Verhaeghe declined to elaborate or field any questions regarding last Tuesday’s events.
Mayor Roger Morrill suggested that some councillors feel that meetings take too long.
“People might not want to be there as long as the meetings have been taking,” he said, “(but) when I look at an agenda, I feel it should be all-encompassing. I’m not afraid to spend a little extra time dealing with things.”
Morrill noted that councillors are not paid by the hour.
“I am there to do as much as I can. I’m not interested in running home early and avoiding issues,” he said.
Richard Verhaeghe said he voted against the agenda because there were too many operational items on it, and not enough actionable items.
“Part of me is wondering if we are meeting just to meet,” he said. “We need a policy as to what goes on the agenda, because there is too much micromanaging.
“I am starting to get upset about every single thing that is coming up,” he said.
“There needs to be some respect to me, as a councillor, to not bring every single thing in town that isn’t maybe a big deal to council.
“We only have a finite amount of time. We get to the meeting at 7 o’clock. Let’s be fresh and deal with everything that we need to deal with in two hours. We don’t need to sit here till midnight dealing with operational things, then when we get to something important, we spend five minutes on it because we spent 30 minutes on something that was operational.”
Richard Verhaeghe also said he’s concerned that issues are being brought up at the expense of taxpayers.
“I’m also concerned that some of the things we’ve put on the agenda are to embarrass our citizens, to make their issues public, or to embarrass administration to say, ‘How come this wasn’t dealt with?’” he suggested.
“That’s my own gut feeling.”
Hawryluk said the meeting didn’t proceed because approved council procedures weren’t followed.
“The reason for the situation was because we, as council, spent a number of hours making and discussing a policy on submissions of items to the agenda,” he explained.
“The procedure we created as council was not followed.”
Hawryluk said he cannot be properly prepared if items are added late to the agenda.
“Ultimately, if a late addition is being discussed, I am walking in with cold feet,” he said. “I don’t consider us to be making a fair decision without having the opportunity to study the case, get the proper documentation on it, and then weigh all the options.”
Richard Verhaeghe agreed.
“Either we follow our own policy or we change it,” he said.
“Six of our seven councillors wanted the policy, but nobody wants to follow it. So why have a policy?”
Morrill said he tried to keep the meeting going, but his efforts failed. A second motion to approve the agenda with the late addition removed failed on an identical tied vote.
“We serve a very valuable purpose, and our purpose should be there to do whatever we can,” Morrill said. “It’s too bad we couldn’t overlook the situation and continue on that evening.”
A third motion, to proceed with the late addition and another item removed, also failed on a tied vote, but in that instance Cherniwchan opposed removing the second item, as it was included on the original agenda.
“My point is that anything councillors put on the agenda is an issue,” Cherniwchan said. “You can’t take it off.
“It wasn’t even about a contentious issue. It was just a request for information, and Tim’s making a point that it should be dealt with by administration,” he said. “To be honest, it is almost on a non-issue.”
Cherniwchan also said he doesn’t agree that there should be no late additions to agendas, and that he wants to deal with issues promptly.
“If I am talking to you on a Saturday and you bring something up, and council is meeting on Tuesday, I don’t want to wait two weeks,” he said. “Why do you not want to go ahead and deal with something that comes up?”
Councillor Paula Evans said she was “embarrassed and disappointed” at the result of Tuesday’s non-meeting.
“It really puts us in a bad light as a council, and it just shows how divisive we are,” Hawryluk admitted.
Richard Verhaeghe disagreed.
“We’re far from dysfunctional. This is democracy at its best,” he said. “My point was to get everyone’s attention.”
But Richard Verhaeghe noted that when he talked to Morrill before the meeting started, “I did tell the mayor that I felt there were certain items on the agenda that could be dealt with in a simple phone call between the councillors and administration,” he said.
“I just wanted to know where the other councillors stand, and I do think that we need a facilitator to bring us together.”
