Westlock County council may have asked for a review by Alberta Municipal Affairs, but it appears a group of residents were ready to call for one regardless.
A website, www.savewestlockcounty.com, has sprung up calling residents to action either by contacting Municipal Affairs, their local councillor or by showing up at council’s July 12 meeting. The six-page site identifies, unauthorized expenditures totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars, councillors not following legislation, no strategic planning and bad roads amongst the reasons to take action.
At their June 28 meeting, councillors voted 6-1 in favour of asking Municipal Affairs for a municipal inspection. Prior to the vote reeve Bud Massey said he was unaware of the website.
“I didn’t know anything about it, so it didn’t have any impact,” he said.
Massey had no other comment about the website, other than that an inspection has already been requested.
“I’m not sure what the purpose of it would be, council has already passed a motion to ask for a review from Municipal Affairs,” he said.
When contacted by the Westlock News, the site’s author said in an e-mail that Save Westlock County is a collective effort of about 30 residents concerned with how the county is being run. The group says they’ve received more than 150 e-mails over the weekend with people offering information, including two from Halifax.
The author did not reveal identities of any of the group’s members.
