Western Standard - December 05, 2023


City of Chestermere councillors and senior staff dismissed

Mentioned
Rebecca Schultz Shannon Dean Doug LaGore Councilor Sandy Johal-Watt Councillor Stephen Hanley Councillor Blaine Funk Councillor Mel Fote Councillor Santos Jo Hall-Watt Jeff Colvin
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Episode Stats


Length

7 minutes

Words per minute

140.31

Word count

992

Sentence count

48


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Chestermere Mayor Jeff Colvin and Councillors Sean Dean, Sandy Johalatt, Sandy Hall-Watt, and Nitesh Narayan are dismissed from the City of Chestermere Council and all three of the municipality s chief administrative officers.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.480 Today, I have issued a ministerial order dismissing four members of Chestermere City Council as well as all three of the municipality's chief administrative officers from their roles, effective immediately.
00:00:13.040 Mayor Jeff Colvin, Councillor Mel Fote, Councillor Blaine Funk, and Councillor Stephen Hanley were sent notice of their dismissal earlier today, as were the three chief administrative officers.
00:00:24.640 I determined that dismissal of Councillor Shannon Dean, Councillor Sandy Jo Hall-Watt, and Councillor Nitesh Narayan was not justified based on the information before me.
00:00:35.380 With this loss of quorum on Chestermere's municipal council, I have amended the appointment of the official administrator who has been in place since September 2022 and provided him with new authority to act as council for Chestermere until a by-election can be held.
00:00:51.480 I have also appointed an interim chief administrative officer to run the operations of the city starting today.
00:00:59.780 The CAO will report to the official administrator.
00:01:03.880 For many months, Alberta's government has been carefully following our legislative process in our response to concerns raised by citizens starting in January 2022 about the conduct of Chestermere City Council.
00:01:16.780 Municipal affairs undertook a month's long review and inspection process that resulted in 12 directives from the previous minister that were delivered to Chestermere Council members on March 15th of this year.
00:01:30.880 An official administrator, Mr. Doug LaGore, Douglas LaGore, was also appointed beginning in September 2022 to supervise the municipality and its council.
00:01:41.260 However, the city of Chestermere City Council member has continued to be managed in an irregular, improper, and improvident manner.
00:01:49.980 We have been patient and we have been reasonable.
00:01:54.040 We have provided city officials with opportunities to address the areas of concern.
00:01:59.540 I have provided a detailed explanation of my various concerns in the material posted to our website.
00:02:05.660 The city has failed to comply with some of the directives that were issued to them by my predecessor, Minister Rebecca Schultz.
00:02:14.080 Further, they failed to comply with the supervisor of the official administrator.
00:02:19.680 As my predecessor, Minister Schultz told the council and the CEOs when she delivered the directives to them in person last spring, the actions that the government was requiring of them through the directives represented the bare minimum of what any Albertan should reasonably expect from a municipal council.
00:02:38.080 Everyone can help visit alberta.ca forward slash Chestermere to see the documentation for themselves.
00:02:47.980 The government's expectations are completely reasonable and the actions these expectations require are not difficult.
00:02:58.900 Overall, the city of Chestermere has not been complying with its legal requirements.
00:03:03.020 They have been failing to comply with the directives and the supervision of the official administrator and operating in an irregular, improper, and improvident manner.
00:03:12.240 The documentation of their noncompliance is robust and thorough and freely available for public review on the government's website.
00:03:20.200 Some content on our website has been redacted to protect the privacy of individuals, but we have tried to be as transparent with this information as reasonably possible.
00:03:30.600 What's most unfortunate to me is that Alberta's government has gone out of its way over many months to give the city as much guidance and opportunity as we possibly could to help them comply with their legal requirements.
00:03:44.500 But they have failed to do so.
00:03:48.280 Instead, the city has attacked the integrity of the government's inspection process and anyone associated with it and tried to establish a narrative that brings in elements that are not related to the inspection or the directives or the correction of their actions.
00:04:02.380 Enough is enough.
00:04:05.180 Every municipality in Alberta must comply with their legal obligations and those who choose not to will be held accountable.
00:04:11.720 All members of Council and the three CAOs received a letter on October 18th that conveyed my ongoing concerns and indicated my intention to dismiss Council and the CAOs.
00:04:22.460 The letter required a response by November 2nd.
00:04:25.780 After considering all the information available to me, including the responses received, my concerns have not been resolved.
00:04:33.440 The city left me no other reasonable choice.
00:04:36.440 I cannot and will not allow a municipality in Alberta to continue to be managed in an irregular, improper, and improvident manner.
00:04:44.860 Therefore, the four members of Council and the CEOs are dismissed effective immediately.
00:04:49.400 However, I have determined that despite Council's overall failures, dismissal of Councilor Shannon Dean, Councilor Sandy Johal-Watt, and Councilor Nitesh Narayan is not justified given their efforts to hold Council to account and to attempt to move Council in a more positive direction toward proper governance practice and compliance with legislative requirements.
00:05:13.340 In closing, I wish to be very clear.
00:05:43.320 We will receive a notice in the mail notifying them of these dismissals, that an official administrator is in place to act as Council for Chestermere, and that an interim CEO has been appointed, and that planning will begin for a by-election to fill the vacant Council positions.
00:05:57.080 One of the first orders of business will be to undertake a financial review of the city of Chestermere.
00:06:03.840 I will be using my authority under the Municipal Government Act to order this review, which will be conducted by an independent accounting firm.
00:06:12.060 The results of this review will be shared with the residents of Chestermere in advance of the by-election.
00:06:17.240 In the meantime, I want to reassure the citizens of Chestermere that municipal services will be delivered without interruption.
00:06:26.400 To the people of Chestermere, rest assured, your rec facilities will remain open, your roads will be plowed, your garbage will be collected.
00:06:36.060 Normal work to serve you, the residents, continues for Chestermere City employees.
00:06:40.500 Only the three chief administrative officers have been dismissed.
00:06:43.440 The difficult decisions I've announced today are about getting Chestermere's house in order.
00:06:48.560 The official administrator will provide interim governance until a by-election can be held,
00:06:52.780 and the interim CAO will work to stabilize the city administration.
00:06:57.040 All of this is being done with the sole aim of restoring good governance to Chestermere.
00:07:03.480 Thank you.