What’s in the letter calling on the province to inspect Medicine Hat, COMCO and the mayor?

2. A review of all exit interviews for city and COMCO staff who have left their position since Nov. 1, 2021. This should also include staff who had or have WCB claims or complaints into Human Resources around toxicity in the workplace, harassment and/or bullying.

3. Independent, confidential exit interviews of all senior leaders who left their positions since Nov. 1, 2021.

4. The review or creation of a policy for the City (including the Mayor and Council) to formally and publicly correct misinformation they have provided, including the creation and execution of tangible corrective action measures to ensure it will not continue to happen (we have had two public apologies for large mistakes regarding utilities, both made my the new Managing Director of our utilities, in the last nine months)

5. A review and recommendation into part-time versus full-time council members. Council is often unprepared for meetings, their questions and debate show a lack of understanding, admits to being unable to absorb what is needed, having either not read, or not retained the agenda items and information. Council has stated the workload is heavy and outweighs the pay provided. Are part-time roles part of the problem?

6. A review of the well reclamation strategy of COMCO. What is the minimum number of wells we need to reclaim per year, and how many are we doing? What is the timeline to complete these, and cost per year? We’ve had the city say reclamation will cost $125 million and that is part of why they needed to keep the extraordinary profits from COMCO over the last two years. But the profits more than cover this entire cost, and that would assume all wells need to be reclaimed at once, and there is not any provincial or federal funding available.

7. The release of the information requested in our second FOIP

8. A review of bonuses, gross honoraria, and other payments made to City of Medicine Hat employees and contractors, including the COMCO division.

9. A requirement for the City of Medicine Hat to include a note on their annual financials if bonuses were paid or not. Currently the annual financial statements do not state anything about bonuses (pg 49).

10. A requirement that Council and the Mayor utilize auto-responders for their emails so the sender knows it was received.

11. Training for Council to ensure Administration is held accountable to answering questions and provide all information required..

12. The review or creation and execution of a communications policy with respect to allowing the public to know if they will be receiving a response to their inquiry, or not. If the member of the public has been listed as someone not to reply to (like me),the creation of a process by which the City will communicate that to the individual and provide other resources for communication flows to continue.

13. A method for citizens cut off from communication, like me, to lodge a formal complaint and have a review done to ensure that Council and the Mayor are justified in their choice to ignore the citizens concerns and questions.

14. A review of the Mayors political Facebook Page and Messenger account as it is monitored and answered by her staff at times, without prior notification to the user.

15. A review of the governance of council meetings and corrective action to ensure the Mayor is properly trained on, and effective in, chairing meetings.

16. A review of Councils decision to remove their email addresses from the City of Medicine Hat website..

17. A review of the public statements made by Councillor Sharps regarding utilities rates on Aug. 5, 2023.

18. The creation of a policy that restricts Council or the mayor from turning off or restricting comments, or blocking citizens, on their political social media pages.

19. The creation of a formal complaint process for citizens to complain about Councils conduct. The current Code of Conduct only allows for formal complaints to be made by Members of Council.

20. Improvement of the current policy for the City to advertise notices of opportunities for the public to participate in council decisions.

21. The creation of a policy for the City’s duty to investigate when information is brought forward from the public. This, had it existed, would have avoided three months of work by the citizens to get the output information released from COMCO.

22. A policy to required the City to post the tri-annual financial report document link on their website. Right now they only link to a youtube video of the CFO talking about it. With the limited search function accuracy, finding the Tri-Annual reports buried in the Council meetings agendas is difficult at best.

23. A public apology and formal reprimand of Councillor Darren Hirsch for the recorded disparaging public comments he made about me on November 2nd, 2023

24. A public apology and formal reprimand of Councillor and Deputy Mayor Shila Sharps for her continued assertion to the public that utility rates were not a Medicine Hat decision.

25. Training for all Council members on their obligations around their Code of Conduct. ● Recording by the City of all open committee meetings and posting on YouTube.

26. An audit of positions

27. The creation of a public record of motions brought forward by Council member like this https://www.calgary.ca/council/ward-9/notice-of-motion.html

28. A review of the bylaw and meeting minutes online database search functionality and corrective action/improvement

29. An independent review of the new Managing Director of Energy and Infrastructure’s suitability for the position and corrective action to ensure improvement in the communication and accuracy of information being provided to the public.

30. A policy to require that any change to a bylaw or policy affecting utilities be emailed to all utility customers, especially with deadlines to provide input, and notices of public hearings.

31. A review of the Public Relations Advisor position and the City’s handling of communication around the staff members leave from office.

32. A review of the city’s process for posting and advertising all public notices and hearings to make them prominent for the user and easy to find and know about.

READ THE FULL LETTER

by Eli J. Ridder | @EliRidder

What’s in the letter calling on the province to inspect Medicine Hat, COMCO and the mayor?

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