April 30th Council Meeting Hits New Lows
The decisions made by the Council majority at their April 30th meeting confirm that the lawless wild west has taken over in Rocky View. This “no rules” mentality produced a council meeting overflowing with complete disregard for process and decorum.
The April 30th council meeting made it clear that a majority, elected by only 3,000 people, is dictating to over 40,000 residents. They appear to have completely forgotten that councillors are elected to serve the interests of all residents throughout the entire County, not just their own private interests.
The lowlights from the April 30th meeting included:
[if !supportLists]· [endif]An unprecedented stifling of councillors’ rights and freedom of speech when the majority removed a notice of motion from the agenda. Notices of motion are the procedure councillors are expected to use to raise issues and direct Administration to undertake specific actions. This motion, which Councillors Hanson, Kissel and Wright attempted to introduce, sought to create a best-practices CAO hiring policy.
[if !supportLists]· [endif]The total disregard for the County’s procurement policies in rushing through a $165,000 proposal from the Bragg Creek Connect committee to undertake a county-wide feasibility study for high speed internet servicing, cancelling the already-approved in-house work on the same topic. Standard policy requires competitive quotes for contracts over $10,000 and public tendering over $50,000.
[if !supportLists]· [endif]The final death blow for a county-wide gravel policy (the Aggregate Resource Plan) without having made any effort to move forward on this initiative that was mandated in the County Plan and that generated more public input than any other County policy.
[if !supportLists]· [endif]Completely ignoring planning policies by approving a cannabis production facility in the middle of 200 acres of residential parcels. To ensure orderly development, the Janet ASP treats the entire 200 acres as a transitional area that requires a local plan before any land use changes are approved. The applicant made it clear they did not want to incur the cost of preparing the required local plan. So, the Council majority allowed its preparation to be pushed off into the future, when it may or may not ever be demanded.
Details of the first three are provided in subsequent posts. To watch the meeting yourself, the video is available here.
