Council debates over spring workshop retreat

Shannon LeClair
Times Reporter

 

A special town council meeting was held on March 24 to discuss the spring workshop, and the possibility of going on a retreat out of town. Councillors were split with half in favour and half opposed to the idea.
Councillor Brad Walls stated that by going away it would give him and his fellow councillors the opportunity to focus more on the task at hand, without having the distractions that come from being so close to home.
“I think it’s important though for us to be focused on our task and really spend the time, and I think we can be focused here, but I think it’s a little more difficult,” said Walls.
He also feels that by going away it provides council with a chance to team-build and network on a more relaxed basis.
Councillor Bob Sobol was opposed to going out of town, but did agree that council could benefit from team-building, done in a separate planned and organized event.
“I was a big promoter of not going out of town as well. I think for the first year of a new council it’s a good thing in the sense that there is some team-building regardless of whether it is organized or not, you just get to talk on a more relaxed basis to your fellow councilors,” said Councillor Steve Grajczyk.
“I don’t think we should go every year, just once when council gets elected.”
He said once you divide the money, which at the lowest was just over $6,000 to go to Canmore, is miniscule over a four-year period.
Councillor Pat Fule said when he ran for council there were a lot of comments about per diems and going away for retreats that were paid for and he said he made a promise then to not support this.
“I don’t believe I need to be at a retreat to know and respect my fellow councillors, I know what are the important items for each councillor, what things are important to them as far as the town’s concerned, we all do our work on our committees. I don’t think we have to go away to be the get-along gang to be a good council, we can do that by staying here in town,” said Fule.
He continued to say that as far as being focused, the town elected them to work for the town and said if council can’t do a good job creating a budget in their own town then there’s something wrong.
“My rationale for that is because we’re so close to our family’s concerns and we’re so close to being able to just run home for a couple of minutes, where if you’re out of town you’re really on the actual (task),” said Walls.
Councillor Denise Peterson, who was in attendance via speakerphone, said she was involved in the session in April 2014, and felt there was a great deal left behind on the table. She didn’t find it focused, creative, motivating, inspiring or contemplative. She said it got the job done and met challenges, but that was because of the great staff and their organizing.
“A retreat is a planning session, a visioning session, it’s not just a budget session and I think that we can very easily misconstrue the process to connect the fact of going or not going to budget numbers when we know full well there are a multiplicity of factors that impact our budget not just the $7,000 that seven councillors and administration going away, that barely equates to my personal budget on council,” said Peterson.
Last year she didn’t use her personal budget, and she would be prepared to use her own if that’s the case.
Peterson said she also thinks that in planning retreats in the past there was a lot of good planning, guidance and a strong coaching component that helped.
“I think it has a lot to do with more than just going away, Councillor Fule is right, we can do the same job that we’ve always done, but I think we need to do a better job than we have been doing and I think we can do that if we’re away, I don’t care where it is,” said Peterson.
“I think that spending that very small amount of money comparatively to the huge responsibility that we carry is something that we can prove to our community that we can do better, and we can do well and I think retreats can teach us how to use it to the benefit (of the community).”
Fule continued to reiterate that he feels council has done a good job, and are still doing a good job and that in his opinion it isn’t necessary to go on a retreat.
Mayor Michael Ell said an item brought to his attention is the amount of money going out of the community, and with the strained economic situation in the province they should consider supporting local businesses.
Another area of concern for Ell is spending that much money at this point, but he was in favour of the concept of coming up with a solution and doing some teambuilding, and create a vision on where they want to go as a council and a town.
Fule made a motion to host the workshop in town, which was defeated. A second motion was made to host it in Canmore, which was also defeated.
Grajczyk, who was in favour of going on a retreat, made a new motion to reconsider the motion of holding the workshop in Strathmore, which was approved, with Walls opposed.
“The reason I did this is we could go on forever here, let’s get on with it, let’s make a decision,” said Grajczyk.
Peterson said in the interest of going forward and compromise she voted in favour of the motion.