In a bizarre turn of events, Athabasca town council’s regular meeting Tuesday night was abruptly cancelled when three motions to approve the agenda were defeated on tied votes.
Councillors Tim and Richard Verhaeghe and George Hawryluk all voted against approving the agenda due to last-minute additions, and because they felt some items did not belong on the agenda.
Councillor Colleen Powell was absent from the meeting, resulting in the tied vote.
“So we go home now?” Mayor Roger Morrill asked after the first motion was defeated. “Seriously, guys?”
“Unless there is another motion that comes forward, and is approved,” chief administrative officer Doug Topinka confirmed.
Tim Verhaeghe identified the cause of his objection.
“One of the concerns I do have are late additions,” he told council. “At one of the meetings we had, we passed a motion that there were to be no late additions unless they were time sensitive.”
He noted that he opposed the decision to ban late additions, but said he wants council to stick by its decision.
“I actually voted against that motion, because I felt that sometimes it was appropriate to have late additions,” he said. “Ever since then, we have had late additions pretty much every meeting that I feel are not urgent.”
Tim Verhaeghe also said he felt that two items on the agenda were unneeded; specifically, he identified a late addition by Morrill, identified as “Duplex across from WHPS”, and an item on the original agenda, tabled by councillor Lionel Cherniwchan, “Muskeg Creek local improvement levy”.
“I am concerned that we have items on our agenda week after week that could be dealt with at the administrative level,” Tim Verhaeghe said. “I don’t know if (these issues are) a council concern, and I also don’t know if all the items on the agenda are really agenda items, but could be dealt with at the admin level,”
“That’s your opinion that it should be an administration issue,” Cherniwchan said. “I would like to hear this discussed in council.”
“That comes down to however council wants to conduct its business,” Topinka offered. “It comes down to what level of discussion council wants.”
Morrill volunteered to remove his late addition from the agenda. “I am willing to drop off my (item) if you guys are willing to go ahead with the meeting,” he said.
But a second motion to approve the agenda, with the duplex item removed, was defeated on an identical tied vote.
Richard Verhaeghe made a third motion to approve the agenda with both the duplex and Muskeg Creek levy items removed. That brought an objection from Cherniwchan.
“I disagree with going ahead and dropping things off that I put on the agenda,” Cherniwchan said. “I think we need to go ahead and listen to the points I am brining up. You may disagree that it needs to be on the agenda, but the thing is that it’s on the agenda. You can’t cherry-pick things. We draw a line here. If you’re going to start cherry-picking things off, why do we bother coming?”
Morrill asked Tim Verhaeghe if adding late additions as a topic for discussion to the agenda would solve the problem.
“If it were added to the next agenda,” Tim Verhaeghe replied.
Topinka pointed out that without the adoption of the agenda, there was no business to discuss.
“Just for clarification, the agenda isn’t the agenda until council has approved it. It is a draft document put together by administration for council’s consideration. At this point, until the majority of council says, ‘This is what we want to talk about,’ it doesn’t exist.”
“I think this is regrettable,” Morrill said as the meeting was abandoned.
Three delegations were on Tuesday night’s agenda, including Sherry Sikora with the WHPS Parents Council, and Ida Edwards with Communities in Bloom.
“I do wish to extend apologies to Sherry and her entourage … Ida, thank you for coming. I apologize,” Morrill said.
A woman with the WHPS delegation commented that they “teach their children to get along, and at council they couldn’t even agree on an agenda.”
Topinka said the delegations would be added to the June 5 meeting agenda.
Other items on the agenda included detour conditions, truck route study and FCSS Appreciation Dinner.
