ATHABASCA — The Tourism and Economic Development (TED) committee is reviewing their terms of reference (ToR).
The committee previously requested the review and were provided with the current ToR at their Jan. 11 meeting and discussed them during the Feb. 17 meeting with Athabasca University (AU) chief of staff to the office of the president Gilbert Perras asking for clarification on his role specifically.
“Just because technically right now, I guess I'm not a voting member as it currently reads although we've been functioning as if I'm a voting member and I've been voting,” he said.
He also wanted to have a conversation about the committee and its relationship with the three councils, Athabasca County, the Town of Athabasca, and the Village of Boyle.
“So, I totally understand that right now it's a county council committee, and that there are representatives from the other two councils but I'm just wondering if that's how we want to keep this going forward, or whether we want to consider that this is really a committee that sort of reports up to all three councils or can provide recommendations to all three councils,” said Perras.
Town of Athabasca Coun. Edie Yuill said she reports back to her council. The Town of Athabasca set aside $31,635 in the 2021 budget based on their share while the Village of Boyle pays less, and Athabasca County pays the lion’s share.
“We do report back to our councils plus county just send an e-mail to our CAO (Rachel Ramey) with the minutes et cetera,” she said. “So, it's not like our council doesn’t know what's happening.”
Athabasca County interim CAO Dawn Phillips said it was her understanding in talking with Ramey that there had been discussions between former county CAO Ryan Maier and Ramey about possibly changing the concept of the committee.
“So, there definitely have to be conversations between the three CAOs and their respective councils and see what the thoughts were that Ryan and Rachel had talked about, maybe get that information together and that would be my recommendation just as a starting point,” said Phillips.
Perras wondered if there was another form the committee could take and used the Athabasca Regional Multiplex Society and Aspen Regional Water Services Commission as examples.
“Commissions are created under the authority of the Municipal Government Act (MGA) so they're separate government bodies so, we can't really call it a commission,” said Boyle CAO Warren Griffin. “The Multiplex society is a society under the Societies Act, and if history was allowed to repeat itself, I would never recommend that for running a recreational facility such as the Multiplex, I’d rather have it as a governance board with a joint agreement between the partners just for governance, control, and accountability.”
Before becoming Boyle CAO, Griffin was an Athabasca County councillor representing Division 9 and was active in shepherding the TED committee over his years in office.
“This is where people forget I had a back and forth over interpretation,” he said. “Athabasca University is a member of the board and is equal to all board members. We look at this as a sub-committee under the MGA, all appointed members are voting members. So, this is where we’re arguing over wordage.”
Phillips also noted any changes could have budgetary implications as well, but the committee chose, for the time being, to clean up some of the verbiage in the ToR.
“In 3.1, I would like to, at the end of ‘member of the Village of Boyle,’ I’d like to have ‘council’ added,” said Yuill. “(It says) county council and town council but nothing about the village council.”
Griffin suggested AU be officially added to the ToR as a member-at-large, but Perras noted the AU seat is permanent.
“So, Warren, my only concern with that is that there’s other stuff about members-at-large being three-year appointments, et cetera,” said Perras. “So, I would prefer that I stay as a member as opposed to member-at-large and you just indicate that I’m also a voting member.”
“But you’re appointed and it’s very clear that you’re a voting member,” said Griffin. “So, instead of member-at-large it could say voting member, Athabasca University.”
The updated version will be brought back at a future meeting once the recommended changes are made.
