No ‘passing of the buck’ in how council handled complaints, says mayor

There was no “passing of the buck” in how city council handled concerns from some property owners affected by phase 1 of the cast iron water main replacement project, says the mayor.

During its Aug. 12 executive committee meeting, council vote 5-2 on a recommendation to receive and file a report that the administrative review officer submitted after investigating the residents’ complaints. Councillors Brian Swanson and Scott McMann were opposed. The recommendation must be approved during the Aug. 26 regular council meeting to become official. Report recommendation

As part of his recommendation, administrative review officer David Foley suggested the seven affected property owners be offered a goodwill discount of 10 per cent on the original bill. This would be a final settlement of the dispute.

Without the discount, the affected property owners would have to pay $154,850.75. With the discount, they would pay $139,365.68.

However, since council voted to receive and file Foley’s report, his recommendation was essentially voided.

Several councillors received emails from the affected property owners saying they did not feel adequately consulted during the review, said Coun. Chris Warren. He thought Foley would review every available document and speak with all affected residents, but that obviously didn’t happen.

Mayor Fraser Tolmie agreed that it was a confusing situation, especially with so many conflicting documents to go over. However, the review was supposed to be independent and was to provide a recommendation of who was at fault. He thought this was all a misunderstanding and no one was at fault.

The engineering department sent letters to the affected property owners saying council would discuss this on Aug. 12, explained assistant city clerk Tracy Wittke. However, Foley’s report was not released since it was initially discussed behind closed doors.

That letter was sent on July 26, said Warren. While the affected residents could have looked for the report on the city’s website, he thought city hall could have announced that it was available on Aug. 9 with the entire council package. This would have enhanced communications instead of forcing property owners to attend the council meeting.

“I’m trying to be as diplomatic as possible. There has been quite a bit of breakdown with the property owners,” he added.

This issue has been hanging around since 2016, said Swanson. However, he continued, it has revolved around the cost of phase 1 to the affected property owners. Did they know in advance how much they would pay? That’s an important question and, obviously, Swanson thought the answer was no.

Swanson added that he thought council should have handled this instead of “passing the buck” to the ARO. This is a good example of council needing to make a decision and either not having enough information or passing the buck to someone else to decide, agreed Coun. Dawn Luhning.

The problem Luhning had — and the conundrum she believed council faced — was the majority of affected property owners in phase 1 paid their invoices. She thought it would be unfair to give a discount to the seven residents when the other 26 had paid.

Foley was convinced the municipality provided enough information to the affected property owners about how much they would pay, argued Warren. As for the idea of “passing the buck,” Warren didn’t believe that was true. Just as the province has an investigative ombudsman, the administrative review officer did the same thing for council.

“Passing the buck is avoiding the tough decisions. This council has not avoided making tough decisions … ,” said Tolmie, noting the ARO was asked to help clarify the situation. “So I am somewhat disturbed to hear the ‘passing of the buck’ comments, especially when the majority of this council made the decision with regards to (fixing) High Street.”