During their second last meeting of their term, Town of Athabasca council passed seven motions that were recommended in the municipal inspection report.
Mayor Roger Morrill brought the item up for discussion during the Sept. 19 meeting, saying he appreciated council convening for a special meeting Sept. 15 to discuss the recommendations, but that council needs to “bring forward some specific motions.”
“I am going to make some direct motions and I hope council will entertain these as you see fit,” he said.
Morrill’s first motion was to direct administration to add seating rotation to the council procedures bylaw, per council review. This was recommended in the inspection report under 5.7: Council Leadership and Political Capacity.
Coun. Tanu Evans said the procedural bylaw already instructs council to rotate seats.
Morrill added “unless it is already there” to his motion. The motion passed unanimously. Coun. Joanne Peckham called into the meeting.
An examination of Bylaw 17-14, the Town of Athabasca council procedural bylaw, shows seating rotation was not already in the bylaw.
Morrill’s next motion was to update the code of conduct bylaw for council review.
Evans said council does not currently have a code of conduct bylaw, but a policy.
Chief administrative officer Robert Jorgensen said under the modernized MGA councils will be required to have a code of conduct bylaw, but for now council can update the policy and “when we get the bylaw in place just put it as a bylaw.”
Morrill switched the word “bylaw” for “policy” in his motion, and it was passed with unanimous support.
His next motion was to look into the function of the Family and Community Support Services (FCSS) board, and if required, create a bylaw and report back to council. This motion was passed unanimously with no opposition.
The municipal inspection report recommended council should review all council committees and appointments to ensure they are all established by bylaw.
The report mentioned on page 39 some committees were in place “without an authorizing bylaw to establish their function,” including the FCSS board, pool design committee, communications committee and administration committee.
Morrill next made a motion to direct administration to create a request for proposal for a human resources expert to review HR policy. The motion was passed with Evans opposed.
Morrill moved to dissolve “under its current mandate” the administration committee.
The inspection report states the committee “likely contributed to a council division and apparent alignment of former CAO Josh Pyrcz with council members on this committee,” and called for the discontinuation of the “counterproductive and poorly designed” committee.
The motion passed with Peckham and Evans opposing it.
After the vote, Evans said he voted against the motion because he was not sure if there were any outstanding issues council needed to deal with through the committee. Jorgensen confirmed there were not.
Morrill’s next motion was to also dissolve the communications committee “under its current mandate”, but later amended the wording of his motion that terms of reference be created for the committee.
Gurba said council does not know the committee’s mandate, so “if there’s no true mandate, how can you have a motion to actually get rid of it if it doesn’t exist in the first place?”
Morrill’s amended motion to create a terms of reference for the communications committee was unanimously supported.
Morrill brought forward one last “bigger” motion, that he would like council to “adopt the CAO’s recommendations as their own framework” and report it to the Minster of Municipal Affairs for his approval, along with all the preceding motions in response by this council in response to the 2017 municipal inspection.
Morrill was referring to a report Jorgensen brought forward on how the town could tackle the inspection report’s recommendation’s during council’s Sept. 15 meeting.
Gurba asked Morrill to amend his motion to also include council’s revisions, which Morrill agreed to do. The motion passed with only Evans opposing.
Response to Municipal Affairs
The last order of business was approving council’s draft response to Minister of Municipal Affairs Shaye Anderson, and Morrill asked for a motion.
Council is required to submit a response to Minister of Municipal Affairs Shaye Anderson on the inspection report’s 29 recommendation by Oct. 12, including a plan to address issues identified in the report.
Gurba moved to accept the draft letter after Jorgensen read it out loud.
Evans said he could not support the letter, with the second sentence of the letter reading council was, “Also happy to see the positive strengths and practices the town is currently using were also set out in the report.”
“This report was not a positive thing,” he said. “I think putting that in there makes us look like a bunch of schmucks trying to avoid the reality of our situation,” he said. Peckham said she agreed with Evans.
Schafer, who originally moved the section about the town’s strengths be mentioned in the letter during council’s special meeting, asked to change the wording of the letter so it would read, “We were pleased to see that the executive summary began by documenting strengths of the organization and stakeholder strengths.”
Morrill said he would have no problem with the change.
Evans read from the inspection reports executive summary, that the “municipality has been managed in an irregular, improper or improvident manner.” He said including the part about the town’s strengths does not “feel proper.”
Schafer said he “would not want to see the strengths of our organization, certainly our administration, nor the strengths documented by the stakeholders be undermined. Those are our strengths. It’s this table, may I suggest, that is the problem.”
With Schafer’s change to the wording of council’s letter Morrill called the vote. The letter was approved with Evans and Peckham opposed.
