A motion brought to St. Albert City Council last week was a waste of time for city employees, city council and St. Albert taxpayers.
Coun. Cam MacKay brought a motion to the Jan. 23 council meeting proposing that city council no longer provide insurance coverage for city elected officials when they are accused of pecuniary interest. He suggested elected officials involved in any pecuniary interest matter should be required to pay their own legal bills.
City lawyer Gene Klenke said the city has insurance coverage to protect its elected officials. Klenke said that the city is not a disinterested party when a private citizen takes action against an elected official. The city must provide legal backing to its elected officials so they can do the city’s work. Otherwise, city councillors may recuse themselves from many matters that they fear someone threatens to take them to court for pecuniary interest. Taken to logical extreme, Klenke said councillors might not be acting in the city’s best interest out of fear of repercussions. Klenke also noted that city councillors already had all of this information, since it was included in administrative backgrounders attached to the two motions.
Yet council discussed the matter in the open meeting and then went in camera for 30 minutes before MacKay decided not to bring the motion forward.
MacKay was not apologetic for his actions or the time wasted in this pointless pursuit. MacKay said he still believed the city “shouldn’t always be on the hook for this stuff.”
At best, the motion was poorly thought out. At worst it was mean-spirited and possibly designed to draw further attention to a Court of Queen’s Bench pecuniary interest case against Mayor Nolan Crouse that is for the courts to decide.
In a year when people will consider whether they want to throw their hat into the ring to run for municipal council, you would want potential councillors to know that the city would have their backs.
What person would want to run for city council if they thought they could lose their house should they face legal expenses while making decisions for the citizens of St. Albert? What person would want to run for council if they thought fellow city councillors and the city would abandon them if they were accused, falsely or otherwise?
City councillors are elected to do the best job for the city and to work together to act in the best interests of the city at large. MacKay’s motion did neither. It simply cost city council and city employees’ time, and distracted city councillors from higher priority business of governing our city.
It should be obvious that the city should provide coverage to protect itself and its elected officials. As we lead up to the municipal election this fall it is worth paying attention to how much council time is spent on issues that are not city priorities, and that waste city council time.
