PUBLIC MEETING SANGUDO

For All Those Who Missed Our Last Meeting

HERE IS WHAT WAS DISCUSSED

LSARA

Sangudo January 24, 2017

Welcome to all of you to our Third open public meeting of the Lac Ste Anne and Communities Ratepayers Association. The previous two meetings have been held on the East end of the County so we wanted to ensure that we embraced our neighbors to the West and provide a brief of the same information we have provided previously.

Let me begin with the Associations objective.

The association will be a positive and credible advocate of Lac Ste Anne County Communities and will, by coordinated input, oversee that elected county officials are held to terms and conditions of provincial laws and regulations. It will continuously strive to work for the betterment of all ratepayers.

Our membership criteria:

Must be over the age of 18- $10 per person, $20 per family but must all reside in the same household.

Application forms are available on the back table. The application form has an area where you are welcome to identify any issues that you think the association should be working towards a resolution. Method of payment is cash or cheque. The funds we collect are utilized to pay for venues for meetings, any stationary expenses we may incur etc.

Some of the issues that have previously been brought forward:

1. Lack of communication and transparency with the electorate

2. Utility fees – It was communicated that there was a minimal increase in your taxes. By backing out the landfill fees, this is not a fair representation. This was a percentage of your overall taxes. Currently, if you have taxes payable of $2000, then the proposed fee would have been over 10% of your taxes. There remain a number of issues with the utility that have yet to be addressed. Some that have not received any communication, some that have received billings for multiple properties , some with no residence. Ratepayers that have adult children living with them that are not allowed to utilize the card. We still have no way of determining what the volume is , only the times that the card is swiped. So if someone goes to the landfill once a week with just recycle materials for example, they are being charged the same as the user that fills a pickup with construction and household waste. This is also a business and must be operated as one.

3. Reduction in services with taxes that continue to rise.

4. Erosion of agreements with neighboring communities – there is a cost to this. For example the fire agreements with Onoway, Alberta Beach, summer villages was an income to the County. Not working together has cost the County a few million dollars. There had to be a building with some land purchased on the East end of the county to house the fire units and also resulted in a full time member being at the hall so they can publicly state they have the same resources available as the private business that has now taken over these communities. There are costs to not working together.

5. Bridges – there are some serious concerns here as the County is responsible for 217 bridges that are going to require upkeep as well as replacement. For a few years, funding ceased for all of the counties and the upkeep/repair/replacement was downloaded onto the Municipalities. While no one could forecast this was going to happen, it occurred prior to the new Administration building taking the lions share of our funding. Recently there has been the addition of some funding from the government, however it has to be applied for and we are not only not guaranteed any funds, it could be minimal if at all. So there has to be a plan.

6. Allocation and loss of Linear funding – the income loss is expected to be over a million dollars this year due to the economic downturn. When the oil companies shut in wells, there is no revenue therefore their assessment is lower. This was already understood when the building went ahead. With oil prices the way they are, this could become the norm, not an event.

7. MSI funding - the new Administration building - funding has been allocated to repay the loan. Where is the money going to come from to upgrade and maintain our roads, other infrastructure that we have in this County?

8. Renovations – demolition – re-purposing of old county buildings – what is going to take place with them and what is the cost to do so. Asbestos is not considered a problem until you disturb it and there are very strict regulations on how it must be re-mediated and removed. There is a cost to this that is not in any budget.

9. Lack of bi elections – There are currently two divisions without representation. Any key issues that are voted on, they have no voice. Bi elections were requested and denied.

Key issues are sometimes voted on by less than a full contingent of council which potentially means that a division can be left without a voice in a vote that has the ability to impact them. If one councilor is not present, the vote goes ahead. So you could have only three voting on an important issue. This makes the bi elections even more critical. We asked, they did not listen. “Council has opted to not hold a bi-election for one primary reason. Divisional boundaries will soon be modified because the counties largest division is significantly more populated than the others. Due to this pending change, a bi election is perceived by council as a fruitless expenditure of time and resources.” That is a direct quote from the Mayor. It would have made sense to bring on a new councilor when Division 5 was vacated. That would have provided time for the new member to get up to speed, understand the issues and be better positioned for the October 2017 election. More importantly, they would have had an opportunity to respond to the residents of Division 5. The timing was deliberate as the councilor left within the 18 months (by one day) which meant that a bi election would not be mandated under the provisions of the MGA.

10. Pending changing boundaries - we recognize that there is no parody in how many people are in each division. Part of the MGA indicates that there should be no more than 25% difference in population between divisions. #1 and #5 are currently the largest divisions. Is the proposal to align strictly on population or are demographics of that population being considered? What additional criteria should be or can be considered?

11. Petitions – briefly, what did transpire here is that we facilitated three petitions. The first one was in March of 2014 where the bylaw requested $7,507,042 from the capital finance authority and adding in the monies they had in the account, $2,609,802. This totaled 10 million dollars. The rate paying public demanded a vote. July 28th, 1053 voted to not borrow the monies. Before that vote happened, Administration put out a flyer that was titled “Just the facts”. The tone was threatening in its statements such as “if the electorate comes back a NO to the borrowing, this Council may proceed with utilizing additional reserves and/or short term borrowing to build a new office (cannot be petitioned). This would in effect, place an immediate burden on the rate payers of today, and not have the costs recovered over an extended 25 year period. At the bottom of the same flyer, in bold, “As stated above, the new office project will be proceeding; how it is paid for will be decided by Council after the vote”.The bylaw was defeated. There was some division in the vote, absolutely. 546 against and 492 in favor.

At that time, the residents were still being told that the building would be IN Sangudo. Late fall of 2014, they forged ahead with open houses, selected a design firm, purchased land. The second by law 26-2015 was published on July 23, 2015. The borrow ask had grown to $9,239,847 with the addition of the money that had in the fund, the building had increased $1,732,805. The Municipal Government Act – under Section 254 states “ NO municipality may acquire, remove or start the construction or improvement of a capital property that is to be financed in whole or in part through a borrowing unless the borrowing bylaw that authorizes the borrowing is passed.” The capital project that had no funding had a home.

The next petition requesting a vote was put forward. More people signed the petition from all divisions than those that voted on the first plebiscite. On August 18, 2015 the second petition was provided to council and administration. 1646 ratepayers wanted to have a say in the borrowing bylaw. The petition clearly stated , “ hereby petition council to demand a public vote”. We all know that did not occur. Rather, council and administration rescinded the 26-2015 bylaw. Without any public consultation, amended the 2015 Capital budget to fund the new Administration Building project utilizing $2,609,800 from reserves and $9,090,200 from current (2014, 2015 and 2016 Municipal Sustainability Initiative and Future Grants (2017, 2018,2019) MSI. Immediately thereafter, a new bylaw was introduced 29-2015 which was to incur indebtedness by short term borrowing for $5,112,800 for interim financing for the construction of a new building. 1st and second readings were completed in one meeting. Fast tracked 5 days later the third reading was completed. The recorded vote was 5 in favor 2 opposed.

We believe that the Municipal Government Act is reciprocal for the protection of both the rate payers and the council. We believed that our only recourse was to Petition the Municipal Government under #572 Petition to the Minister for an inquiry into the Affairs of the Municipality of Lac Ste Anne County.

Just for background, in 2013 1705 people cast their vote to put the current council in place. In 2015 2543 eligible voters in the County of Lac Ste Anne signed the petition asking for the Municipal Government to assist us in trying to understand how a council and the administration could forge forward and borrow monies and utilize grants when we clearly told them we wanted consultation? The last census that was just conducted tells us that just over 5000 people are eligible to vote in this county. So over 50% of the voting public in this County wanted to have a say and instead they ignored us.

A group delivered the petition to the Deputy Assistant Minister on October 1, 2015. We had 60 days to obtain signatures according to the MGA and were required to obtain 20% which would have been 2,052. We had 2543 in 16 working days so we decided to submit it as we were concerned about time lines. The council and administration forged ahead. On November 2, 2015 we received a communication from the Ministers office indicating that she had ordered a review of the Petition. We waited patiently. We wrote, we called, we waited some more. It took the Ministers office 169 days, over 5 months to respond to our petition indicating it was insufficient.

1. 7 signatures discounted due to inability to read or part of the printed name was missing

2. 3 were excluded due to the not being electors of the municipality

3. 77 due to lack of witness affidavit

4. 498 due to incomplete or incorrect according to tax roll.

Let me speak to this. The petitions were handled from my home with an extensive group of volunteers. Every single sheet that had signatures were reviewed with the County addresses for all subdivisions etc. Every single sheet was verified with a witness affidavit. If there was more than one witness on a sheet, it had the appropriate affidavits. This was put into a binder for presentation and verified once again prior to being turned over to the Deputy Assistant Minister. Since that time, we have continued to write to the Ministers office and to our MLA Oneil Carlier requesting the names of the people who signed that they discounted so we can verify against our own copies. Just yesterday after much badgering, we finally received an email confirmation that a copy will be sent to us as soon as possible. We have a copy of the documents, we need to be able to compare ours to theirs.

It was at this point that we determined that we could best serve all of the people living in the county whether they lived in a town, a summer village, were an owner or a renter, with a Ratepayers Association. Democracy was not alive and well in this county nor was it with the engagement we had with the Provincial Government. Since this all began, we have had three Ministers that have sat as the the Minister of Municipal Affairs. Many of the issues that we are currently looking into have the ability to impact us all.

The MGA (S153) states in part that the council has the following duties “to consider the welfare and interests of the Municipality as a whole” We don’t believe that obligation is being met. The Association has been formed in order to obtain feedback/direction and input on where you see this society needs to go in the future. We wish to work WITH the county and find solutions to the issues. WE will endeavor to ensure the county works towards creating transparency with the ratepayers and stakeholders of this county. What we won’t do is have those discussions in chamber where we are not free to speak or held to time lines or an agenda. We invited Council and Administration to this meeting and the last one we held. Division one councilor Lorne Olsvik did attend and answered questions from the floor. Very well received by the public. The timing of this meeting happened to fall on a conference that some of the members of council are attending so three of them sent their regrets. NO response from the Mayor or from the Administration.

One thing that I believe is very important to communicate is that at no time did any of us indicate that we did not need a new office. What we didn’t want was to put us all into a financial situation that we cannot recover from. The economy was already going into a recession. We have no industrial base as our mill rate for business is so high we not only cannot attract any, we don’t seem to want to run our County as a business and look for ways to entice and grow business in the area. By putting the Administration building out of the community, the costs inevitably increased. There are no longer any financial benefits to the Community of Sangudo. The County owns many parcels of land, they did not have to purchase one. Feasibility studies were conducted by members at large that were invited to do so by Administration and Council. They didn’t take into account any of the recommendations.

As the Lac Ste Anne and Communities Ratepayers Association, we believe that it is not reasonable to continue with the lack of leadership and accountability. We are ultimately financially responsible for all decisions made by council and administration. The County is a business and must be fiscally responsible in its decisions and accountable to the share holders, you, the ratepayers. This was a very brief summary of some of the issues that we have brought forward and are seeking answers to.

We will continue to communicate with Council and Administration and ask for answers to the questions that we all have. We will work in partnership with all communities within the boundaries of Lac Ste Anne. We will also work together with other Municipalities that can share their experiences as we can share ours. It is important that we ensure as an association that we seek and endorse candidates for the October 2017 election. Whether those be current council members or members that have yet to put their name forward and run.We are seeking to work with people that have the best interests in mind of the County as a community.

We invite you to join the Association as either a member or as a Member of the executive. If you have a few hours a week that you would be willing to work with us, we would be grateful for your support.

THE FLOOR WAS THEN OPEN FOR DISCUSSIONS.