ATHABASCA — It was a meeting that went viral, but for the wrong reasons.
At the June 24 Athabasca County regular council meeting, reeve Larry Armfelt informed councillors CAO Ryan Maier had quit and citing the Municipal Government Act and under advice from a lawyer he had council vote on accepting Maier’s resignation and installing an interim CAO.
Coun. Kevin Haines, Coun. Penny Stewart, Coun. Travais Johnson, Coun. Warren Griffin and Armfelt all voted in favour of both motions. Coun. Dwayne Rawson, Coun. Dennis Willcott and Coun. Christi Bilsky voted against both and demanded some answers. Coun. Doris Splane was absent from the meeting.
In a June 29 interview, Armfelt says that under Robert’s Rules of Order, he immediately called both questions during the meeting, which meant there was no time for debate or answering questions, which led to a list of objections from the three councillors who voted against the motions.
“It don't matter what we say, five new councillors run this council and administration and the whole bloody works. I hope the public is aware of that,” Willcott said at the time.
And since that day, the process under which interim CAO Dawn Phillips was put in the role, has been questioned by many in the public, as Cory Armfelt was CAO in the Town of Taber until January, and Phillips left her job there as recreation director in March. She was then hired by Athabasca County and started as agriculture and community services director in May.
“(Maier) – first of all – he wasn't fired and second of all, as far as I know, we're not embroiled in any million-dollar law suit,” Armfelt said in an interview June 29. “I don't know about it, but he was not fired and he was not intimidated or anything like that to be fired.”
He scoffed at the insinuation Phillips was hired because of his son, saying council has no knowledge of who has applied and is not part of the decision-making process.
“Ryan is the only employee that (council has); he does the hiring and the firing; we do not get involved whatsoever in the hiring or firing of individuals they are totally in the CAO’s control,” said Armfelt. “So, for him to come to council, and say to us, ‘Well, I'm kind of wondering about hiring A, B, or C, which one do you guys think?’ No, that absolutely never happens.”
And the reason he chose to ask her to be interim CAO was because she had a bit of flexibility from the position she was hired for as director of agriculture and community services.
“It was a case of Ryan hired her, and this was kind of what I thought; this was what was going through my emotional state, ‘We have lots of work that we have to do. I cannot pull good people right now at the busiest time of the year and say, 'Hey, I'm going to pull you out of the position that you know very well, we need you in that position’ and make that person, an interim CAO. I just couldn't do that. That was my thought process. So, I had some choices to make, all good people but because of the time of year and because of this timing I just thought for the betterment of the county I can't pull them out of the key positions. This was all my two o'clock-in-the-morning thought processes that were going on.”
But the biggest complaint from the three dissenting councillors was why did the decision to install Phillips as interim CAO done so quickly.
“We can’t exist without a CAO; we are not an identity without a CAO for the county, so therefore we have to have a CAO in order to begin to continue doing anything,” said Armfelt during the contentious discussion with council.
Municipal Affairs told the Advocate a CAO acts as a recording secretary, so anyone could fill in that space for the meeting, however since it was done under the advice of a lawyer, the ministry said it wasn’t necessarily improper to do it this way either.
And as for the allegation he railroaded Phillips through, Armfelt says his record of allowing people to voice their opinions speaks for itself.
“I let the discussions go, I don't cut anybody off at those discussions, some of them speak two, three, four, five times at any county council meeting,” he said. "I can never be blamed for not allowing somebody to voice their opinion even though it might be the fifth time, even to the point where there are other councillors that get upset with me when we take a break — 'For gosh sakes, Larry, he's talked five times already’ — well, that's democracy. The way I see it, you got something to say you're gonna have the right to say it so that allegation is crazy as far as I'm concerned.”
Armfelt does think the seed for the rumours came about after a June 14 in camera session councillors had at the Multiplex about succession planning.
“The thrust of that meeting was to make Athabasca County a good place to live and work in. And our concern was – because some of us were leaving – was to make sure that we wanted that to happen,” he said. “And by October we wanted to be able to correct anything or whatever. So, it was a meeting to do some soul searching or whatever in the future.”
And he maintains it was all done under the lawyer's advice.
“Anything that I did was under the guidance of the lawyer. I don't think I did anything at all; no, I didn't. Anytime that I did anything it was with the guidance of the lawyer,” said Armfelt.
