BARRHEAD, WESTLOCK - The mayors of Swan Hills, Westlock and Barrhead made a last-ditch plea to Pembina Hills trustees during their Aug. 5 meeting not to pass a bylaw that would alter the division’s electoral wards and eliminate a trustee that specifically represented Swan Hills.
The board had previously passed two readings on Bylaw 06-2020 during their June 24 meeting, but trustees did not unanimously vote on a motion to move to third reading, so it had to be pushed to the Aug. 5 meeting.
Once again, third reading on the bylaw was pushed to the next Pembina Hills board meeting, which is set to take place on Wednesday, Aug. 26.
This is because Policy 07-09 states that when a delegation makes a presentation to the board, no business relating to the request of a delegation will be dealt with until the next board meeting.
Town of Swan Hills mayor Craig Wilson was the first to speak to the board. He noted that back in January when trustee Kerry McElroy had originally presented the three options the board had come up with as part of the electoral ward review, about 30 to 40 residents had come out to hear the presentation despite the temperature plummeting to -40C.
The consensus at that meeting was that the people of Swan Hills were scared of losing their voice, Wilson said. They reiterated that point in the online survey that the board conducted, in which 62 per cent of respondents were in favour of maintaining the status quo.
Of course, the board eventually came up with a fourth option for revising the electoral wards, which is outlined in Bylaw 06-2020. Wilson acknowledged that trustees brought that option out to individual school councils, but suggested that a lot of communication didn’t happen because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Wilson also pointed out that this electoral ward review is being conducted when Swan Hills lacks a trustee, as the seat normally allotted to the town has sat vacant since the resignation of Nancy Keough in September 2019.
“It feels like you’re trying to sneak this through while we don’t have a voice at the table to object to it,” he said.
Wilson said he probably wouldn’t object to this change if Pembina Hills had run a byelection to replace Keough and no one stepped forward to fill her seat, but “we weren’t given a chance.”
He pointed out that having a board with only six trustees would be very abnormal, though board chair Jennifer Tuininga later retorted that 20 of 61 school boards in Alberta have an even number of trustees.
Wilson then contested one of the main reasons for eliminating one trustee, which is to save money. (Pembina Hills has estimated that reducing the board from seven to six would save approximately $20,000 per year.)
He pointed out that $20,000 was a tiny percentage of Pembina Hills’ whole budget, and trustees would be splitting up the same workload that seven people have among six people.
“I don’t think it’s going to be the big savings that you anticipate it being,” he said.
Later on, Wilson noted that Swan Hills had considered reducing the number of town councilors from seven to five several years ago — in fact, he had made the motion to do so.
However, after a couple hundred residents turned out to the town hall meeting and stressed to councilors that they wanted them to remain on the same number of committees even if their numbers were reduced, that motion was defeated.
“That was an impossible task. You were going to burn councilors out over-working them. It’s no longer a part-time gig; it’s full-time,” he said.
Westlock comments
Town of Westlock Mayor Leriger, who appeared at the meeting in support of Wilson, said he had done some research trying to determine what the guiding principles of creating Pembina Hills from the amalgamation of several boards.
Noting he had spoken to former board chair Clayton Jespersen, Leriger determined the No. 1 guiding principle behind amalgamation was that the province was pushing for larger-size school boards and local communities were concerned about losing their voice.
The importance of having a voice at the table recently was seen when the Westlock Foundation and Sturgeon Foundation amalgamated into the new Homeland Housing Foundation, Leriger said.
Once again, there was a situation where the province was warning that each foundation needed to operate a certain number of living spaces to be viable, but Westlock’s concern was having a seat at the table.
“The people that live in those facilities, much like the children that are educated in your schools, are your moms and dads and aunties and uncles and friends and our neighbours,” Leriger said.
“And as elected officials, they expect us to represent them. And so our biggest concern was that we need a seat at the table. We’ll consider the merge, but we need a seat at the table.”
While Homeland Housing is a large and unwieldy organization, the merger has had tremendous benefits in terms of saving on administration costs and in regional decision-making.
At the same time, Leriger said that when he hears people suggest that the town and Westlock County and Village of Clyde should amalgamate, he believes they are seeing “magical, mystical” savings in combining administrations that don’t exist.
Leriger’s last point was that, in these bleak economic times, the federal economy is not running on all cylinders, the provincial economy has been hammered hard and the local economy has suffered from multiple disastrous years in agriculture.
Given Swan Hills’ importance in the oil and gas sector, Leriger said now wasn’t the time to be throwing that community’s voice away.
Barrhead comments
Town of Barrhead mayor Dave McKenzie was the last to make a presentation. The thrust of his brief comments was that when you eliminate representation from an area, you have a huge impact on that community.
“We are all currently very familiar with an imbalance in representation and the effect that it can have. We see it at the federal level all the time, right? And I would hate to see that take place here.”
McKenzie noted that when he first entered municipal politics, it was stressed during his training that the role of elected officials is to be the conduit between the community and a municipality’s administration.
He suggested that he and his fellow mayors get calls from and enter into conversations with people all the time who are uncomfortable about appearing before a council meeting.
However, when they know they have a local representative that they see at work or around town, that makes a huge difference.
“And I think when you remove one trustee from a community that’s already somewhat isolated, there’s no doubt in my mind that that community is going to feel forgotten,” he said.
“I hope the board takes that into consideration, how important representation is to that community.”
