Council woes

Last Monday's town council meeting-that-wasn't was, fortunately, one of a rare number of meetings that failed to take place due to a lack of councillors.

That the last time it happened was over three years ago shows just how reliable our town councillors are at getting to their meetings and governing this town.

However, when looked at in another way, it has to be noted that last week's meeting was the second time in only 38 months that town council has failed to meet quorum.

That is far too often.

We have seven councillors here in Westlock. Seven councillors who are dedicated to their role as our local governing body. Seven councillors who are paid well to attend meetings and make decisions that affect every one of the residents who live in town.

That four of them, for whatever reason, had to miss a meeting raises some questions. Some may be serious questions. Some may just be exploratory. But they are questions nonetheless.

Now, obviously we don't want to be too harsh here. There are some very legitimate reasons why a councillor may have to miss a meeting. They have lives outside their roles, and sometimes life happens no matter what commitments you may have in place already. It's not uncommon to have a councillor absent from a meeting for whatever reason.

But four at once? That's pushing it.

Mayor Bruce Lennon said he was aware two councillors would be absent from the meeting. That's good to know.

What isn't good to know is that the other two absent councillors were "surprise" no shows. Where were they? There are others out there who wanted that job, and just might have shown up to do it.

It does no good to jump to conclusions as to the why. And the where is somewhat immaterial.

But the fact is two councillors were seemingly AWOL, which can make one wonder how seriously they take their jobs as our elected representatives.

Fortunately through this, not once did Lennon or CAO Darrell Garceau blow this event off as just something that happens.

They both acknowledged it was an unfortunate and rare event, and that it should not have happened.Let's hope that if it does happen again, it's so far in the future that nobody remembers this time.