Medicine Hat’s council divide deeper than one-off act of misconduct, councillors say

“She still refused, she’s refused at least four attempts.”

Those various tries at collaboration and cohesion came before and after the power-limiting sanctions were placed on mayor Clark in March, according to Sharps.

Coun. Cassi Hider said the tense exchange between Clark and City Manager Ann Mitchell at an August 2023 meeting that led to council’s charge of misconduct and various limitations on her power was not an isolated incident.

“Tension has been building between the mayor and our current city manager prior to this,” Hider told CHAT News.

READ: Medicine Hat’s mayor says judicial review hearing ‘went well’

Hider blamed years of high turnover in the city manager role on Clark.

“We’ve gone through five city managers and there’s one common denominator here,” she said, in reference to Clark.

The relationship between a mayor and their city manager is crucial for city government to function and must be “close-knit and respectful”, Hider argued.

“If you have a mayor that will not communicate with either administration or her city manager or her council — you could call us her team — it impairs us from doing any work,” she said.

A few months after Clark and the current council was elected in October 2021, then-city manager Bob Nicolay retired and left the city at the end of January 2022.

Nicolay said he wanted to get to a planned retirement faster and cited the new council’s aim to bring a change in priorities. He started a new role as a city manager of Grande Prairie a month later, where he remained for over a year.

A high-level staffer, managing director Rochelle Pancoast, was appointed as an interim city manager for a few days in March until former city manager Merete Heggelund took over the role temporarily.

Despite council intending to have Heggelund in place until a new permanent chief administrative officer was found, she left the role in June 2022. She did not respond to requests for comment from CHAT News about why she left.

Heggelund was replaced by Dr. Glenn Feltham, who served as interim city manager until the city revealed in November 2022 it had chosen Ann Mitchell as its next permanent executive.

Rochelle Pancoast took over city manager duties for a brief while again before Mitchell formally started in her role in February 2023.

She came on board seven months before the exchange she had with Clark on Aug. 21, 2023, that led to a third-party investigation that council used as a premise to strip Clark of her powers.

Accounts from Sharps and Hider appear to lend credibility to previously unverified allegations that Clark’s behaviour, in part, has caused challenges for those that have occupied the city manager role during her tenure as mayor.

‘Seven months of disruption’

Clark’s lawyer Grant Stapon argued during the judicial review hearing on Tuesday that Clark was capable of carrying out her role as council’s chair after the exchange with Mitchell at the August 2023 meeting up until when the sanctions were imposed on March 21.

Sharps disputed his take.

“It is not true. Unfortunately, we’ve had seven months of disruption,” Sharps said.

Coun. Shila Sharps says council tried mediation with Mayor Linnsie Clark and failed. Eli J. Ridder/CHAT News

“It has taken everybody around that table pulling together to get everything done and keep staff engaged and keep any more people from walking out that door.”

Coun. Andy McGrogan said Clark has prioritized herself over consensus.

“I watched Thursday’s interview with CHAT, and she really turned this around. The mayor took this to judicial review when all she had do was apologize at any point over the last year,” McGrogan said.

“Yet, it seems like it’s more important for her to be right than to lead,” McGrogan, a former police chief and first-time councillor, added.

Coun. Sharps and McGrogan say an apology from the mayor could have prevented the sanctions. Eli J. Ridder/CHAT News

“She could have said something like: ‘I believe that I was in the right that the process wasn’t followed properly, but I could have been more respectful and tactful in my approach and if I offended the city manager and council, I apologize and look to learn from this experience.’”

Clark in a CHAT News interview Thursday said: “I think it is a bit strange for a municipality to be spending taxpayer dollars going after the mayor.”

READ: Medicine Hat’s ‘dirty laundry’ aired in ‘schoolyard dispute’ hearing

McGrogan said any legal action at the taxpayer’s expense is on Clark.

“The mayor makes it sound like the city is needlessly spending taxpayer money, but she had had multiple opportunities to end this by demonstrating some leadership through a promise to improve — it’s called humility,” McGrogan said.

Sharps said she was sorely disappointed, adding that she, much like many Hatters, supported the mayor and that this is not something anyone wants in a leader.

“I openly will apologize because it’s okay to screw up. It is not okay to double down like this,” Sharps said.

“In [Thursday’s interview between CHAT and the mayor], Clark said she was open to reconciliation and talking about it. This is inaccurate because every single member of this council has offered to have mediation with her,” she added.

It came down to the mayor issuing two words, Sharps said.

“At the end of the day, all she had to say was ‘I am sorry, I still think that you’re wrong, city manager, but I’m sorry if in any way I caused you disrepute’, and that’s it.”

The comments made by Sharps, Hider and McGrogan on Friday marked the first time since March that councillors spoke more openly about their experience with the mayor.

Council members — mayor included — repeatedly insisted over the last several months they were able to work together despite Clark’s legal action and tensions at the horseshoe.

Councillors insisted they couldn’t speak in-depth about their deliberation process when they considered measures against Clark as those discussions took place in closed meetings.

However, an unredacted version of the Kingsgate Legal report and further details revealed through the judicial review has since exposed further cracks in the relationship between mayor, council and city manager.

With a judicial review hearing on Aug. 13 that featured strong language from both Clark’s lawyer and the city’s lawyers, the prior restraint appears to have now been dropped.

‘Council and mayor are equal’

Coun. Sharps opened up about some of the logistical issues facing council.

“What should’ve been a two month process was seven months,” Sharps said about the Kingsgate Legal investigation.

She placed the blame on Clark, saying the mayor delayed her responses to the investigator.

Sharps said she has heard people ask why council didn’t stop Clark’s line of questioning during the August 2023 meeting.

“Some people are wondering why we didn’t step in when it was happening, but I don’t think people realize that the city manager works for the council and the mayor,” she added.

“I don’t think people realize that the council and the mayor are equal. There’s a lot of learning out of all of this for people to do.”

Sharps added that the code of conduct issues had nothing to do with the city manager and that if a bylaw was contravened, then that would fall on the chair that controls the meeting.

“If there is an error with the bylaw and I was chairing the meeting, then that’s on me. Let’s fix it. It is okay to screw up, but it is not okay to make our bylaw somebody else’s mistake,” Sharps said.

“It’s our mistake, we can’t have it both ways, but let’s quit blaming everybody else for what we do.”

‘Not a quitter’

Everyone on council, including the mayor and eight councillors, have made it clear they didn’t run to end up in a leadership crisis.

Mayor Linnsie Clark no longer has the ability to chair meetings due to the sanctions. Eli J. Ridder/CHAT News

Coun. Hider said that the fallout has been saddening for her and the community but she still wants to keep going.

“I’m not a quitter. I don’t want to give up and I believe that the majority of us want to work together and get things handled,” Hider said.

“Most of us are fairly new and when you’re new at something, you have to work twice as hard to understand and make sure you’re doing it right,” she said.

“Parts of things [between the council] are probably done, but that doesn’t mean we’re finished doing our job.”

Hider said that with 14 months before the next municipal election, it’s too late to try and remove Clark and hold a byelection.

She also warned the public about misinformation coming from Clark’s camp.

“There’s quite a lot of misleading information about the mayor, the mayor’s attorney and the mayor’s office that isn’t quite full truth,” Hider said.

“There’s the rest of us that are gobsmacked when she speaks because the rest of us were there and we know what went on. We’re just trying to do our best to finish the term, which we will, and we will get things handled,” she added.

The rest of us want to work, no matter if we’ve got different mindsets or not. But when you’re with somebody who puts up roadblocks constantly and someone who does things like this, it just causes delays after delays.”

Council meets next on Sept. 3 after Monday’s meeting was cancelled over “a lack of agenda items“.

— with files from Dan Reynish, Regan Tate, Chris Brown

by Eli J. Ridder, Adrian St.Onge

Medicine Hat’s council divide deeper than one-off act of misconduct, councillors say

‘Seven months of disruption’

‘Council and mayor are equal’

‘Not a quitter’

Our Community