Council to track city status costs

Times Reporter

 

After council defeated a motion to track city status expenses, residents were upset, thinking there was something to hide.  

At the March 12 meeting Councillor Dave Hamilton made a motion to track all costs associated with the research and process to change from town status to city status. This doesn’t include the hourly wages for administration to conduct the research process as this cost falls within the parameters of their day-to-day duties and responsibilities. 

“That was my original position, was that all costs should be tracked and the reason for that was because it’s been mentioned be members of this council that this would be a minimal cost,” said Councillor Bob Sobol. 

“Well in order to find out if it was a minimal cost or not I felt, and still do, that all costs including staff wages should be included in the tracking process.”

Sobol said he doesn’t feel including the simple operational costs will give the real picture on how much the process is really costing. 

“This council is not hiding anything, the fact of the matter is that as the motion is asking for the cost of staff’s time to write this out and put this together is part of their daily work hours and therefore I don’t believe that it belongs in here,” said Councillor Earl Best. 

Best feels any other costs involved certainly need to be tracked. Mayor Steve Grajczyk has also heard from people that council is trying to hide something.

“This is just clarifying the fact that we are not trying to hide anything. I thought it was clear enough last week, or the week before, that we didn’t want administration’s time tracked, it’s impossible to track, we would have to get a tracker for the tracker,” said Grajczyk.

Anything within the normal realm of administration’s hours will not be tracked, but any time beyond their eight hours will be. The motion was carried 6-1 with Sobol voting against it. Sobol is still in favour of the tracking, but would like to see administration’s time tracked as well. There will be an open house held at 7 p.m. on May 10 at Civic Centre.  

Traffic enforcement 

Strathmore RCMP Staff Sgt. Larry Marzinzik spoke to council about an enhanced traffic enforcement proposal he would like to implement on a trial basis. The idea would be for the town and the RCMP to enter into a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to provide enhanced enforcement similar to what Chestermere currently has. 

In Chestermere a yearly budget of $125,000 is used to pay-off duty RCMP officers for extra traffic enforcement in targeted areas. 

Marzinzik was requesting a six-month to one-year pilot project, with funding of $4,000 per month. The officers assigned to the extra enforcement would focus solely on the traffic assignment allowing them to complete any paperwork that arises from it by the completion of their shift. 

The goal would be to target any areas the public and/or council are concerned with. Discussion of the proposal was accepted as information, with only Councillor Bob Sobol in favour of drawing up an MOU right away.