A petition calling for a provincial inquiry into Westlock County council and administration’s activities is still short of the necessary 1,600 signatures, its proponent says.
Former county reeve Ken Mead launch the petition in November, but said last week that due to some personal business he had to attend to, he wasn’t able to dedicate as much time as he would have liked to collecting signatures.
“The response has been very good,” he said, “I’ve been getting messages and phone calls from people who are willing to sign it, but the challenge is getting it to people for signatures.”
As of last Dec. 12 he said he had approximately 1,000 signatures, more than halfway to the number needed for Alberta Municipal Affairs to consider the petition valid, but he’s not confident the petition will get enough signatures by the Dec. 29 deadline, but if he doesn’t he isn’t too worried.
“My plan moving forward would be to re-establish the petition in the New Year and do it all again,” Mead said.
He has recently launched a Facebook page called “Westlock County Petition to Municipal Affairs” in an attempt to get the word out via social media, which he said he wishes he’d though of sooner.
“Looking back, I should have done this from the beginning,” he said. “I never even thought of that.”
He spent his lunch hours at the library and evenings at the Westlock Rotary Spirit Centre last week trying to get more residents to sign.
Mead launched the petition Nov. 1, saying at the time he was concerned this council and administration weren’t conducting their affairs properly and in accordance with the Municipal Government Act. He emphasized the petition isn’t meant to push for recall of the current councillors.
“It’s never been my goal to get these guys out of power. My goal is solely to have somebody look at the discrepancies everybody knows are happening, and say this is how you have to do things different,” he said.
The petition launched shortly after council and administration found themselves in hot water over a controversial severance offer made to its employees, which the employees’ union argued was a violation of the collective agreement. Roughly one month prior to that, council hired Peter Kelly, the embattled former mayor of the Halifax Regional Municipality, as the new CAO.
Council was apparently unaware at the time that Kelly had been implicated in providing improper loans to a concert promoter that ultimately cost Halifax taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Mead said in recent months, he’s seen nothing that diminishes his concerns about how the county is conducting its business, up to and including the secretive decisions being made about the Tawatinaw Valley Ski Hill.
“It’s interesting that discussion about portables at the Tawatinaw Valley Ski Hill would go in camera,” he said. “Why? There’s no legal concept to it, there’s not personnel concept to it, so why go in camera?”
Reeve Bud Massey has said he doesn’t think the petition has received much support, because residents are now seeing how well the council is working together and with its new CAO.
“Mr. Kelly was an excellent hire,” he said.
Massey said he fully supports the democratic rights of county residents to get involved with this kind of petition, but would prefer to see residents get involved by attending council meetings.
