August 16 After more than a month off, Council was back at the table again this week. Mayor Wilhelm was absent so Deputy Mayor Aitcheson chaired the meeting and there seemed to be a bit of a different, almost more relaxed atmosphere in the Chambers as a result. The agenda was quite lengthy. During the review of accounts payable, things got very interesting. Councillor Armstrong inquired about invoices totalling in the $8,000 range from the lawyer firm of Harrison Pensa. Yes, that’s right folks, more lawyer bills continue to roll in. Yikes! Oddly, one of the invoices was for a grand total of only $48.88. Who has ever heard of a lawyer issuing a separate invoice for such a small amount, most likely, this only covered the cost of one photo copy,,, The Treasurer proceeded to give Council the details on the invoices which for the most part consisted of various Staff members contacting the legal firm about this, that and the other thing. This prompted quite the series of exchanges between Councillor Henderson, Aitcheson and the CAO, Mr. Tim Ivanyshyn. Henderson stated that he was quite disappointed in the fact that these invoices continue to roll in and stated that Township Staff are a group of professionals who should not need to contact a lawyer with anywhere near this amount of frequency. He commented that the legal bills are likely going to approach the $200,000 mark over this four year term of Council if we keep going at this rate and that he had no idea just how he was going to justify this to the electorate in the upcoming 2014 municipal election and that further, he had recently attended a seminar regarding such issues and he learned that Municipal Staff are required to inform Council members about when and why they are contacting legal firms. He stated that the previous Council of 2006 -2010 had only hired in a lawyer a couple of times over the four year term and that it was outrageous that this Staff had to contact lawyers seemingly at every turn. He then stated that rather than having a high paid group of professionals for Township employees that we might as well hire Kelly’s Temporary Services to just phone up a lawyer or even an engineer when advice is needed and that would save us a whole lot of money. Ivanyshyn took great exception to the Councillor’s comments and stated that sometimes a lawyer’s expertise is needed to advise on various matters. Aitcheson weighed in stating that although Staff are truly professionals, none of them are lawyers and engineers and that nowadays we live in a more litigious society. Henderson then inquired of Ivanyshyn as to why some of these issues are not being brought to Council so that Council could advise Staff. He further inquired as to why Staff is not getting more advice from the various Provincial Ministries on some matters, which advice he stated is most likely free, rather than constantly and endlessly contacting this high price legal firm. He used the recent hiring of Harrison Pensa to comment on Wind Turbines as an example. He said that report cost us about $13,000 and in his opinion, all the legal firm did was assign some young inexperienced lawyer to research the subject resulting in a report that did not really help Council very much in advising on an approach to that topic. He said it was quite the waste of tax payer dollars. By the end of this particular discussion, I would comment that not very much was resolved and I expect that Staff will continue to contact lawyers whenever they so please. Yikes! Council was presented with a couple of new proposed bylaws by Ivanyshyn who is seeking to modify the Code of Conduct Policy for Council along with the Workplace Violence Prevention Policy and Procedures and Anti-Harassment and Anti-Discrimination Policy and Procedures for the Township. It was not very long ago that Council updated both of those bylaws but for some reason, Ivanyshyn, I believe on his own initiative, decided that these bylaws needed to be tweaked apparently. I expect that he had Harrison Pensa weigh in on these subjects once again, further ramping up the legal bills. He stated that Council had been provided draft copies of these bylaws some three weeks ago and was looking for the thumbs up from them. However, what was truly odd about this situation was that the bylaws were not placed on the agenda for discussion. Yikes! It appeared that Ivanyshyn just wanted to ram these new bylaws through as he had placed them at the end of the agenda as part of the formal rubber stamp issues that Council typically endorses at the end of the meeting. When Council reached that stage of the meeting, Armstrong inquired as to why there was no discussion about these new bylaws. Aitcheson backed up her thinking stating that he also wanted to discuss the bylaws prior to passing them. So, the question becomes, just what is in these two new bylaws that Ivanyshyn did not apparently wish Council to discuss? Frankly folks, this looked like a rather sneaky maneuver and it was quite apparent that Council did not appreciate this approach by Ivanyshyn. Council instructed him to place the two subjects on the agenda for the next Council meeting, which is September 4th, for discussion. Council received a letter from Mr. Dan Schneider regarding the Trafalgar Bridge. The aging structure which is owned jointly by Perth South and West Perth is in need of repair on an ongoing basis. Mr. Schneider was seeking to have the bridge historically recognized by placing a plaque on it. Council was informed that West Perth has been discussing the status of the bridge and have commented that they no longer wish to spend any more money on it. This would mean that any repairs made to it would have to be financed entirely by Perth South residents and Council seemed to generally agree that this scenario was a non-starter. The request for funds for a plaque was turned down by Council and there will be further discussions regarding the status and future of the bridge with West Perth.
Posted on: Wed, 13 Aug 2014 22:15:44 +0000
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