Council approved first reading of a bylaw to reduce the number of councillors from eight to six at their Feb. 26 meeting by a vote of 6-3, with councillors Ron Matechuk, Duncan Wong and Judy Kolada opposed.
Before the reduction becomes reality, however, the bylaw must be the subject of a public hearing, currently scheduled for March 12, and then receive second and third reading, which are tentatively slated to occur March 12 and March 26 respectively. City manager Gary Ceppetelli says the bylaw must be passed 180 days prior to the election date of Oct. 24. If it is, the next election could be a bit of a case of musical chairs, with the eight incumbent councillors, assuming all of them decide to run again, competing for only six available spots, along with all the other candidates.
Eliminating two council positions would save just under $20,000 in salaries and perhaps about $5,500 to $16,400 in travel expenses, based on the amounts spent on travel by the two lowest-spending councillors and the two highest spending in the fiscal year 2016.
Shrinking council to six would put Thompson in line with other similarly sized communities said Coun. Blake Ellis, a comment reiterated by Coun. Kathy Valentino.
“When you look at every other city or municipality that’s our size, we have the most,” she said.
Matechuk said that since the need to cut costs is partly due to the new, lower grant-in-lieu (GIL) that Vale Manitoba Operations pays the city instead of property taxes, the councillors who negotiated that agreement could make it possible for council to go through a trial period with fewer members.
“If the three councillors that negotiated the GIL, this miserable, this very poor GIL, were to do the honourable thing and resign from council, we would have a couple of weeks to find out whether we want to proceed all the way to third reading on this,” said Matechuk, who repeated comments made Feb. 12 when council voted 5-2 to amend the Thompson Charter Act, which stipulates that council should have eight councillors and a mayor, to the effect that reducing the number of council positions would prevent “new blood” from coming into council.
Deputy mayor Colleen Smook said that isn’t necessarily true as she and Valentino were among the top three vote-getters in 2014 despite having not been on council before, while Coun. Penny Byer said fresh faces don’t automatically equate to different results.
“I’m not sure that whether you have new blood makes that great a difference in what a council is able to do and accomplish depending on what the obstacles are, the challenges that they face,” she said.
Kolada said that if the next council has only two members and two of them are shut out from serving on committees, the remaining four would have two split the duties of eight committees between them. Byer responded that the next council would have the option of reducing the number of committees if they thought it made sense, while Foley countered that the only reason two councillors – Wong and Matechuk – aren’t on any committees was because they turned down nominations.
“Not all of those nominations were declined so I just wanted to correct that,” said Kolda.
Wong and Matechuk accepted nominations to two committees each at the organizational meeting in November but their fellow councillors voted other nominees in ahead of them. The chairs of the committees are appointed by the mayor.
Wong, who submitted written notice of a motion to rescind council’s Feb. 12 resolution to amend the Thompson Charter Act at the outset of the Feb. 26 meeting, asked Mayor Dennis Fenske if the province had responded to that request yet.
“The response from the province is align your charter with the Municipal Act,” said Fenske. “That’s what we’re doing. Can I make it any clearer than that?”
Thompson’s council had eight members plus the mayor from 1972 to 2002, when the number of councillors was reduced by one until that position was restored in 2010. From 1966 to 1969 there was a mayor plus six councillors and from 1969 to 1972 there were seven councillors.
Council unanimously approved amending bylaws pertaining to campaign expenses and vote-counting machines to reflect the date of the 2018 election earlier in the meeting.
