The City of St. Albert commissioned independent annual community satisfaction surveys until 2010. The 2010 survey report roughly echoed its predecessors in stating 98 per cent of respondents rated the quality of life in St. Albert as positive. Only a third of the two per cent claiming only a fair quality of life blamed high and increasing municipal taxes for their misery. Overall only seven per cent responded that they received poor value for their tax dollar. Listed fifth among the six areas needing improvement was attracting and supporting local businesses.
The role of our city council is largely limited by the Municipal Government Act and City Manager Bylaw to considering the welfare and interests of the residents while participating generally in the development of policies and programs. Then council is to obtain information from the city manager, or from someone the city manager designates, on the operation of those programs. It is mandated that the city manager “shall” be the communication contact between council and city staff, and it is the city manager who establishes the structure of the city administration including creating, eliminating, merging or dividing departments. In short, members of council are to look after the public interest of the residents of St. Albert and the city manager and staff run the show.
Previous city council, who paid attention to the welfare and interests of our residents, deserve credit for those excellent community satisfaction reports. Many members of our current city council seem preoccupied with making the city more business friendly, with selling residents on their perceived merits of attracting light industry and with getting more of the municipal tax burden on new businesses. Why all this preoccupation and effort when, according to the consistent results of the community satisfaction surveys, these things have next to nothing to do with the welfare and interests of residents?
Council and staff have an enormous responsibility to regulate business. City council does so for example through the Land Use Bylaw, which determines which types of businesses can operate at which locations in the city, and in restricted sizes and types of structures. City staff enforces the bylaws passed for our welfare and in the public interest. Business does as expected and rails at times against these restrictions because business is pro-business. In the long term a business will not survive without aligning its activities with the public interest. But in the short term, being pro-business can have little to do with free markets and the public interest, because those things can get in the way of increased short-term returns.
The business agenda has apparently captured the fixed attention of at least a majority of members of city council, even though council’s primary duty with business is to regulate it to forward the welfare and interests of residents. It was reported in the Gazette last month (Oct. 8) that there is evidence city council acted illegally by seemingly creating a new economic development department that will direct business development, marketing and economic development. City councillors would write the job description and fill the new general manager position for this department. Staff members were purportedly transferred by city council. All these things were the responsibility of the city manager and city council must not exercise a power specifically assigned to the city manager.
Quite aside from being a friend of fired city manager Bill Holtby, I find this unsettling, and my concern is only growing. We are ruled by law, not by decree. However as Mayor Nolan Crouse has said, people expect that the mayor is in charge. As the Gazette said in an Oct. 12 editorial, the mayor is down at city hall pushing buttons and yanking levers even when he’s not really supposed to be.
Does that mean the mayor is not legally authorized to push those buttons and yank those levers? Are there things the mayor and council have done that is not authorized by law?
The Minister of Municipal Affairs has the authority to investigate happenings at city hall, issue an order to rectify any faults, and if not followed, sack city council. Legitimate concern about breaches of the rule of law, and potential instability, should be motivation enough to get going. And there is no concept of council solidarity as there is with a cabinet. Minority members of council should speak up, and loudly.
Doug Kennedy is a member of the 150th Anniversary Celebration Committee, and a past Chair of the City’s Subdivision and Development Appeal Board and Community Services Advisory Board.
