Second RM launches bid to oust sitting councillor

McKillop alleges Kuderewko ignored conflict of interest over development

As to the matter of plans to step down before my term has expired, that is an option which I also have considered and will continue to do so.

After a recent court filing by the RM of Sherwood to remove councillor Tim Probe, a second Saskatchewan rural municipality is trying to remove a sitting councillor over an alleged conflict of interest.

The RM of McKillop, some 70 kilometres north of Regina, has filed to disqualify councillor Andrew Kuderewko over discussions and votes he participated in during four council meetings. Council says they involved land-related conflicts of interest he failed to declare.

Documents filed at the Court of Queen’s Bench in Regina focus on a subdivision plan for a cottage development called Vesna Bay, proposed on land within the RM that the council says is registered in the names of the councillor’s mother and brother.

The RM’s filing asserts that at council meetings on Oct. 19 and Nov. 9, 2015, and Jan. 9 and Jan. 23, 2017, Kuderewko didn’t declare pecuniary interests and conflicts of interest when so-called Interim Development Control bylaws that would have affected the Vesna Bay development were discussed and voted on.

The bylaws — of which there were two separate but essentially matching versions — would have put a two-year moratorium on development in the RM so that a planning review could be done and the RM granted further control of appeal processes.

They were put forward after concerned ratepayers petitioned the RM on the matter.

As an “advocate” for the approval of the subdivision, Kuderewko was caught in a pecuniary interest which he failed to declare at the 2015 meetings, the RM’s filing claims. Kuderewko was also conflicted as a debtor “under a collateral mortgage registered on one of the titles” in question, but failed to declare that and was thus in conflict at all four of the meetings in question, according to the filing.

The RM of McKillop is represented by the same lawyer as the RM of Sherwood, Regina-based Merrilee Rasmussen.

Among evidence provided in the RM’s filing are land registry documents that show the names of Kuderewko and his relatives on certain plots of land, and a document relating to a collateral mortgage.

An affidavit from the RM’s reeve, Howard Arndt, says that at the Nov. 9, 2015, council meeting, a motion for a third reading of a development bylaw was defeated as the vote was tied, with Kuderewko having voted against it. Arndt notes the same thing then happened at a Jan. 9, 2017, meeting, when a further bylaw had gone through a first and second reading.

Arndt says in his affidavit the RM’s legal counsel advised him that a land registry search indicated the title to land now registered under Erna Kuderewko (the councillor’s mother) was previously in Kuderewko’s name, but was transferred in 2008. A registry document related to this land is included in the filing.

He adds that, before he was elected to the council in 2014, Kuderewko had appealed a May 2012 decision by the Community Planning Branch of the Ministry of Government Relations to refuse the approval of the subdivision. On appeal, the subdivision’s approval application was reactivated.

Arndt says Kuderewko — prior to his election — promoted the subdivision’s approval in emails to Community Planning officials.

The RM says that, having contravened Section 144 of the Municipalities Act, Kuderewko must resign immediately and be disqualified. He has not resigned.

On Tuesday, Kuderewko said he had not yet responded to the RM’s filing.

“When I do, I expect it will become a record for the public,” he said by email.

“As to the matter of plans to step down before my term has expired, that is an option which I also have considered and will continue to do so.”

Meanwhile, the RM of Sherwood’s court push to remove Tim Probe is ongoing. Probe, who is on leave, was found by the Saskatchewan ombudsman to have been in a conflict of interest during a council meeting, when he took part in a vote connected to the reimbursement of legal fees from the 2014 Barclay Inquiry into that RM.

Probe himself had been repaid fees he incurred at the inquiry, but the bylaw the RM had introduced to repay Probe and other councillors had since been deemed invalid by the Court of Queen’s Bench. Probe faces separate criminal charges of municipal corruption, for which a trial date has yet to be set.

Like Probe’s matter, Kuderewko’s next hearing is at the Court of Queen’s Bench on Aug. 17.