Dog With A Bone Society

Stonewalled by Town Administration – Part 2

by | Jan 11, 2024 | Cochrane

ABSTRACT

With Ms. Stacey Loe, Executive Director, Corporate Services, having refused to answer my five questions related to seeking clarification on how Town Council deals with the requirements of their Procedural Bylaw 19/2019, on December 18, 2023 I decided to simplify matters by following up with an email which concluded with one rather straightforward question, namely:
“Are you telling me, for example, that section 4.2(c) of the Procedural Bylaw (“When the Presiding Officer wishes to participate in the debate on a question or motion properly before the Meeting, the Presiding Officer shall vacate the Chair and request the Deputy Mayor to assume the Chair”) is unclear to you as to its meaning, and is “subject to our individual interpretations” such that it cannot be properly understood? Yes or No?”

I received a rather disappointing reply from Ms. Loe on January 9, 2024, presenting what I considered rather bogus arguments to justify the presiding officer at a Council meeting not to abide by the requirements of Section 4.2(c) of the Procedural Bylaw. My final conclusion in a return email on January 11, 2024 (copied to Council and the CAO mike Derricott) was that “the bottom line is that Cochrane’s municipal government, top to bottom, namely, elected Council plus Administration, has been remiss in ensuring compliance with aspects of the Procedural Bylaw and Council Code of Conduct. And that is unacceptable”.

I also referenced Section 7.3 of the Council Code of Conduct, according to which, “A Member must not encourage disobedience of any bylaw, policy or procedure of the Municipality in responding to a member of the public, as this undermines public confidence in the Municipality and in the rule of law.”

FULL BLOG

According to the December 18, 2023 blog post, “Stonewalled by Town Administration“, disappointingly, Ms. Stacey Loe, Executive Director, Corporate Services, refused to answer my five questions related to seeking clarification on how Town Council deals with the requirements of their Procedural Bylaw 19/2019. Her bogus excuse for not answering was that those specific questions related to aspects of the Procedural Bylaw 19/2019,  “will be subject to our individual interpretations”, thereby, claiming to be unable to explain the meaning of a document which the Administration itself, and presumably her department, had authored. In my December 18, 2023 reply to her refusal to answer my five questions, I decided to simplify matters by concluding with one rather straightforward question, namely:

“Are you telling me, for example, that section 4.2(c) of the Procedural Bylaw (“When the Presiding Officer wishes to participate in the debate on a question or motion properly before the Meeting, the Presiding Officer shall vacate the Chair and request the Deputy Mayor to assume the Chair”) is unclear to you as to its meaning, and is “subject to our individual interpretations” such that it cannot be properly understood? Yes or No?”

On January 5, 2024, I sent an email to Ms. Loe, with a copy to Town Council and CAO Mike Derricott, reminding her that I was expecting a reply to the query contained in my December 18, 2023 email:

From: Ron Voss
Subject: Fwd: [EXTERNAL] Seeking Clarity from the Town’s Administration
Date: January 5, 2024 at 1:58:23 PM MST
To: Stacey Loe <Stacey.Loe@cochrane.ca>
Cc: CouncilDist <CouncilDist@cochrane.ca>, Mike Derricott <Mike.Derricott@cochrane.ca>

Dear Ms. Loe,

As per below, I wrote to you on December 18th, 2023.

I am perplexed by the apparent hesitancy to answer the rather straightforward query posed at the end of my December 18th email. In my view, the lapsed time should have been sufficient to expect a reply to my email as I understand that typical business etiquette is two working days.

I note that the Town of Cochrane web site declares, “We want to hear from you” and encourages one to “Connect with the Town of Cochrane”. Hopefully, that’s not just words. With the new year upon us, hopefully I can expect a reply to the query at the conclusion of my December 18th email, thereby, as I said before in my original communication of December 12th, to provide some clarity on these matters for the benefit of Cochrane’s Town Council.

Sincerely,

Ron Voss
Cochrane

Ms. Loe replied on January 9, 2024:

From: Stacey Loe <Stacey.Loe@cochrane.ca>
Subject: RE: [EXTERNAL] Seeking Clarity from the Town’s Administration
Date: January 9, 2024 at 12:07:42 PM MST
To: Ron Voss
Cc: CouncilDist <CouncilDist@cochrane.ca>, Mike Derricott <Mike.Derricott@cochrane.ca>

Good Morning Mr. Voss,

Thank you for your patience as I was away on holidays and therefore not able to provide a response to your follow up email prior to today.

With respect to Section 4.2(c) of the Procedural Bylaw, as I believe has previously been clarified to you by Ms. Knight, the intent of this section when drafted was that it apply to instances where the Presiding Officer wished to bring forward a Notice of Motion, or place a motion on the floor for debate. We recognize that as written it is not clear and in fact if applied in strict conformity to how it was captured, would be contrary to the Municipal Government Act (MGA) which requires all members of Council (which includes the Mayor and/or a Presiding member) to participate in meetings of Council, and vote on all matters before Council.  Where a municipal bylaw, or section of a municipal bylaw, is contrary to the MGA, the MGA prevails. As such, there has been no contravention in this regard and as noted, this section is one of the areas that will be corrected in the updated Procedural Bylaw coming forward to Council in Q1.

Kind Regards,

Stacey

Stacey Loe
Executive Director, Corporate Services

On January 11, 2024, I responded, in turn, as follows to Ms. Loe’s email:

From: Ron Voss
Subject: Re: [EXTERNAL] Seeking Clarity from the Town’s Administration
Date: January 11, 2024 at 9:01:09 PM MST
To: Stacey Loe <Stacey.Loe@cochrane.ca>
Cc: CouncilDist <CouncilDist@cochrane.ca>, Mike Derricott <Mike.Derricott@cochrane.ca>
Dear Ms. Loe,
Your reply is disappointing in several respects, firstly, your failure or, I should say, your refusal to clearly answer the question that I had posed in my email, and secondly, your concocting a preposterous story so as to absolve the mayor from his failure to comply with the Procedural Bylaw 19/2019 and to avoid having to acknowledge such.
First of all, with respect to the bogus argument that Section 4.2(c) of the Procedural Bylaw “as written…is not clear”, anyone with a basic command of the English language would understand it to be perfectly clear as to its meaning. You know perfectly well what it says, but you refuse to acknowledge its clear meaning, because to do so, would also require you to acknowledge that the mayor as presiding officer has been violating this clause of the Procedural Bylaw, and, as well, just as importantly, that Administration has been lax in ensuring that the bylaw is being properly followed. While it was encouraging that Councillor Morgan Nagel, at the time of my presentation related to this matter as a delegation to Town Council on March 20, 2023, admitted that the procedural bylaw had been violated by Mayor Genung, he, like all the other council members, had refused to lodge a complaint, according to the process described in the  Council Code of Conduct Bylaw 12/2018.
Interestingly, there appears to have been some appreciation as to the meaning of section 4.2(c) of the Procedural Bylaw by the Administration when part of the Recommended Action for the conduct of the Special Meetings related to the 2023-2025 Draft Budget in November 2022 was “That Council temporarily suspends Section 4.2(c)… for the duration of the Special Meetings”.  Noteworthy that Mayor Genung, in response, asked for someone to make a motion “to temporarily suspend our procedural bylaws so that we can communicate freely”.
Another bogus argument is that this section supposedly applies to instances where the Presiding Officer wishes to bring forward a Notice of Motion or place a motion on the floor for debate. I first heard that incredulous kind of revisionist argument from the mayor when I first queried him about this matter in early January 2023, and he brushed me off saying, “That section of the bylaw is specific to the mayor making motions within the meeting, not the ability to provide comments on any item on the agenda. It is the mayor’s responsibility to be an active participant during Council meetings, which is not limited by the Procedural Bylaw”. Hearing this argument from you, essentially nothing less than misinformation, which the mayor and administration rail about, I am beginning to understand who really is the author of this bogus argument in attempt to relieve the mayor of the responsibility to follow this section of the Procedural Bylaw. It seems that the council members largely rely upon Administration to keep them on the straight and narrow and can’t think for themselves.
It is totally ridiculous to claim that the “intent” of that section was to say something totally different from what was actually contained in that section as if it were code for some kind of secret meaning, which only the enlightened understand. While you say the “intent” was to include such language in the Procedural Bylaw, the fact is that such language is not to be found in the Procedural Bylaw 19/2019, a bylaw which your department drafted and the Council unanimously adopted without question in March 2019, so your argument about “intent” is moot.
Perhaps recognizing the fallaciousness of the previous arguments, you felt obliged to raise another questionable argument, namely, that Section 4.2(c) of the Procedural Bylaw 19/2019 would be contrary to the Municipal Government Act (MGA), which, you say, requires all members of Council (which includes the Mayor and/or a Presiding member) to participate in meetings of Council, and vote on all matters before Council. I take issue with that opinion.
At the March 25, 2019 Regular Council Meeting, Ms. Jaylene Knight brought forward the updated Procedural Bylaw (Bylaw 19/2019) before Town Council for their approval in order to “bring (it) in line with standard practice”. Clause 4.2 (c) of the town’s Procedural Bylaw 19/2019 does not prohibit the presiding officer from participating in debate on a question or motion properly before a meeting, but, rather, lays out the conditions whereby the presiding officer can participate in such debate. And, therefore, clause 4.2 (c) is not prohibited by the Municipal Governance Act.  I can understand the inclusion of such a clause where the intent is to have the chair (presiding officer) maintain more of a neutral position at a meeting. In some organizations where even greater neutrality of the chairperson is desired, the rules of order allow the chair to vote only in the event of a tie. In any event, despite your questionable argument, clause 4.2 (c) says what it says in the town’s Procedural Bylaw 19/2019 adopted by Council and must be followed according to Section 7 (Adherence to Policies, Procedures and Bylaws) of the Council Code of Conduct 12/2018. What stands today and must be adhered to is what is written in the Procedural Bylaw 19/2019 and not what you intend to change it to in the future.
I haven’t touched on the failure to properly follow the requirements related to Notices of Motion as per section 7.2 of the Procedural Bylaw 19/2019, but the bottom line is that Cochrane’s municipal government, top to bottom, namely, elected Council plus Administration, has been remiss in ensuring compliance with aspects of the Procedural Bylaw and Council Code of Conduct. And that is unacceptable.
As noted in section 7.3 of the Council Code of Conduct, “A Member must not encourage disobedience of any bylaw, policy or procedure of the Municipality in responding to a member of the public, as this undermines public confidence in the Municipality and in the rule of law”. Indeed!

Sincerely,

Ron Voss
Cochrane
UPDATE, February 5, 2024

Given that I disagreed with Ms. Loe’s assertion that the current wording of Section 4.2 (c) of the Procedural Bylaw 19-2019 was at odds with the Municipal Governance Act (See File #7), I wrote to the Minister of Municipal Affairs on January 10, 2024, seeking clarification on the matter. Disappointingly, in his response, the Minister not only refused to answer my query, but basically told me the communication was closed and no further communication would be entertained from me on this matter. When I called a member of the Ministry staff who I had previously spoken to, he rudely abruptly cut short my call saying, “I am terminating this call”.