BARRHEAD - Town of Barrhead councillors appointed one of their own to the board of the Barrhead and District Historical Society.
Councillors unanimously appointed Coun. Anthony Oswald to represent the council on its board during their June 10 meeting. In a separate motion, councillors also instructed administration to add the Barrhead and District Historical Society to council's organizational meeting of municipal and public committees that need representation from an elected Town of Barrhead official.
Chief administrative officer Collin Steffes said that ordinarily, the council selects who will represent them on the various boards at its annual organizational meeting in late October.
The historical society has, on multiple occasions throughout its history, requested that a council member from Barrhead serve as a representative on the board.
However, the town and county council have always turned down the society for multiple reasons, the most significant being that the society's bylaws did not permit it.
Coun. Dausen Kluin said he was pleased the society had updated its bylaws, especially given the board's recent troubles.
Oswald stated that within the last year, the board had updated its bylaws, allowing municipal elected officials to sit on the board.
Coun. Ty Assaf asked if the changes in the bylaws allowed for an alternate member of the initial group to be unable to attend.
"I would think that would fall to us," Oswald said.
Coun. Don Smith agreed, noting that there were very few community boards with municipal representation that restricted the number of elected officials representing them.
"When they do, it is usually because of legislation," he said, using Barrhead Regional Water Committee, which restricted municipal elected official representatives to one from each municipality.
New reporting category
Town of Barrhead will add a new reporting category to its council meetings in the near future.
Coun. Oswald requested that council add the committee to the official committees list.
However, councillors said that wasn't the appropriate venue for municipally and publicly elected officials' input.
Oswald added he has been attending the organizational meetings on his own accord in recent weeks.
"[Council] has donated to the committee before, and it was suggested to me that as we had donated, we might want to go along to the meetings to see what was going on," he said. "That's what I did, and I kept going."
But Oswald said he at times questioned his effectiveness on the committee, as it was not an officially recognized committee, and he was not bringing the information he gleaned back to council.
"So I thought, if I could bring that information here, it would have a greater impact than just me going for my own information," he said.
Council Dave Sawatzky suggested that might not be the right venue.
"It's not that I don't want to hear about the committee. I'm not sure it is the right place. Isn't it just to organize the event? Where every other [council recognized committee] is an ongoing, meeting on a quarterly or monthly basis," he asked.
Mayor Dave McKenzie agreed with Sawatzky, saying the council could create a category where councillors could report on items of interest to the municipality, but that wasn't part of a sanctioned committee.
Steffes suggested they could create a standing information-elected official category.
Planning, economic development, and legislation services director Jenny Bruns proposed something similar to what the County of Barrhead does during its council meetings, in which councillors report on what they have done since the last council meeting.
She added that more often than not, it was about something they represented the municipality for, but on occasion, they delved into what they had done in their private lives that they felt would be of interest to council.
Barry Kerton, TownandCountryToday.com
