City council bowing out under cloud
By the time you read this, the buyout of Lord Beaverbrook Arena manager Peter Nevin's contract may well be a done deal following a special council meeting last night.
If it's not, it won't be for want of trying. A May 2 city management report regarding the signing of the agreement to turn over control of the LBA to the city, which is contingent upon the signing of the Nevin buyout deal, indicated that if Mayor John McKay refused to sign the deal, protocol dictated that deputy mayor Rupert Bernard could step in and do it for him.
The deal itself has been formally approved by council, but in order for it to become binding, it has to be signed — and that is usually done by the mayor.
However, the Municipalities Act reads, "The mayor of a municipality is subject to the direction and control of council and shall abide by the decision of council." The act also states, "In the absence or inability of the mayor to act, or if the office of the mayor is vacant, the deputy-mayor shall act in place of the mayor, and while so acting, he possesses the powers and shall perform the duties of mayor."
McKay has said he will refuse to sign the deal because he does not agree with it. Instead, he says, the final ratification of the deal should be left to the new council after the election.
Whether one agrees with McKay and, for that matter, the terms of the controversial deal — there are certainly arguments to be made for it based on practical money-saving considerations, just as there are arguments to be made against it based on larger principals — there is no denying that this last-minute attempt to finalize it has been carefully orchestrated.
To set up a special council meeting with the single purpose of getting the deal signed less than a week before council's current mandate expires, with Bernard ready to step in and sign on the dotted line must have take a fair amount of back-room manipulation, complete with whispered phone calls and forming of alliances.
At time of writing, (Monday) it was not known if the meeting actually went ahead, because there was scuttlebutt on the street that those opposing the deal were trying to ensure there would not be a quorum at the meeting, and therefore the signing would not be able to take place. Other rumours at gatherings around water coolers suggest that if that plan was thwarted and the deal did go ahead, then an alternate plan would be set in motion to have the new council reverse the decision.
All of which serves to illustrate, if nothing else, the deeply divisive nature of the issue, with pragmatics holding sway on the one side, higher principles on the other.
We have said in this space before that pragmatics, however distasteful that might be to some, should take precedence in this case, and we have not changed our mind in that regard.
But it is a sad reflection on our current council that the infighting continues down to the wire and that this whole deal has to go down in the history books with the appearance of having been pulled off as something of a smutty little coup engineered by a few who have decided they know what is best for us all.
More Opinion
Search Articles
More CE Network Sites & Partners:
Comments (8)
All comments are subject to the site Terms of Use. For a full commenting tutorial click here.
Our editorial team relies on filtering technology and our visitor community to identify inappropriate comments. In the event that a site user has submitted offensive content that has evaded our filter, please select the option to Flag As Inappropriate presented within the comment. Thank you for helping to keep this site clean.
Let's work for the area , never mind the bickering at the table
I am harkened back to an earlier smutty little coup where Bernard almost, and I say almost, engineered a deal to give his good friend Robbie Tozer a $7 million loan, and without an ounce of reasonable collateral as insurance. It was only thru the good work of our previous City Manager and Councilors Ed Manderson and the late Paul Dawson that this deal was killed at the last minute.
My question to my fellow Miramichiers is: "When is Enough Enough?" Let's take a moment to pause and think about what the Deputy Mayor and the former Premier, Frank McKenna, have done to this River. Unfortunately, we can do nothing about McKenna and his disastrous creation of the City, but we can address his sidekick's role on election day.
"To set up a special council meeting with the single purpose of getting the deal signed less than a week before council's current mandate expires, with Bernard ready to step in and sign on the dotted line must have take a fair amount of back-room manipulation, complete with whispered phone calls and forming of alliances."
the above is a quote from the article and a pretty speculative and misinformed statement. I was actually slightly persuaded by the article until the voice of unreason seeped in
Now he can go sell knick-knacks at his junk store and answer his true calling as an androgynous figurine peddler.
I'm sure there are towns in Alberta where backroom deals are common, but a few oil wells go a long way to reducing the pain for everyone.