The Mayor of Medicine Hat Has Been Banished - Can Council Members Take up the Slack? Doubtful.
By Kelly Allard
After the March 21 2024 Special Meeting where council doled out the harshest penalties possible to our mayor, I asked Acting Mayor Andy McGrogan (starting at the 2:43 mark)
❓Question "What do you say to the people of Medicine Hat now that we don’t have a full time council member, the mayor was our only full time council member?"❓
Response “It really depends on how things wash out, there’s other people who can stand in, there’s the acting mayor, there’s the deputy mayor, it’s a rotating schedule as you know, everybody on council has said they will do what they can to fill in.
The Municipal Government Act says the Deputy Mayor is to fill in when the Mayor is unavailable, if both the Mayor and Deputy Mayor are unavailable then the Acting Mayor fills in.
At the March 4 2024 City Council meeting (at 42:20) Sharps said there was an agenda meeting the week before; the Mayor, the Deputy Mayor and the Acting Mayor all were unavailable. Sharps wanted to be able to delegate that duty to the City Manager.
Mayor Linnsie Clark said she did Zoom in at the scheduled time.
Sharps said that she and “Andy” stepped in, Councillor Hider Zoomed in and they got it done.
Hmmm.
November 2021 The rotating schedule for Acting and Deputy Mayor was published. With the exception of McGrogan, all of the council members have day jobs.
❓If council members cannot make themselves available when they know it’s their turn to step up, how can we expect that they are going to be willing to add an average of an extra 5 hours to their weekly schedule? (40hrs/wk divided by 8 council members)
❓Who is going to handle the business during office hours when everyone is at work?
Council has one employee, the City Manager. Employees always have some sort of supervision and now there is none. Continuity is vital. Now we are going to have a rotating council member walking into a situation they know very little about because they have not been there full time. By the time they get up to speed someone else will take over.
We were given no end date for this; they suspended Mayor Clark for an indeterminate period of time. When asked when Clark can come back, McGrogan said, it’s at the will of council.
❓What do you think of this situation?
❓Do you have faith that things will get done openly in a timely fashion?
❓Is it time for full time council members?
I did the math years ago. We can have 6 full time council members for the price of 8 part timers. They would get paid $65k/yr with the same benefits and allowances.
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