Medicine Hat's chief administrator Ann Mitchell's legal fees could be covered by council dependant on approval. Eli J. Ridder/CHAT News

By Eli J. Ridder

Medicine Hat city manager reimbursed for legal fees, receives salary bump

Oct 7, 2024 | 11:00 PM

The City of Medicine Hat will reimburse its chief administrator Ann Mitchell for the money she spent on sending Mayor Linnsie Clark a cease and desist letter last year and give her a standard three-per-cent raise after council on Monday approved the two items.

Clark voted against covering Mitchell’s $6,520.50 in legal expenses because of what she described as “obvious reasons”. Coun. Alison Van Dyke joined the mayor in voting “nay” while the rest of council voted in favour.

Coun. Shila Sharps, who confirmed to CHAT News the fees were accrued by Mitchell’s letter to Clark, said council’s support of Mitchell was related to occupational health and safety.

“We have an obligation to protect our employees,” Sharps said after the meeting.

“Now, if she would have said, ‘I am going to sue the mayor’, my answer would have been ‘hard no’.”

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Council also granted Mitchell a three per cent raise retroactive to February 2024. Only the mayor voted against Mitchell’s compensation increase.

Mitchell earns between $290,000 and $417,863 on an annual basis, according to salary data released in July.

The reimbursement and wage increase items were added to the public agenda meeting after consideration in a closed council session.

Mitchell’s letter

Clark was sent a letter from Mitchell’s lawyer in November 2023 demanding the mayor to “cease and desist” from further defaming the chief administrator.

The letter, included amid 47 pages of documents released by Clark in March, outlined two occasions when Clark defamed Mitchell.

The first was in an email to “numerous individuals” on Aug. 15, in which Clark alleged nine statements that Mitchell’s lawyers called malicious, all of which were redacted.

Clark’s allegation at an August 2023 public meeting that Mitchell carried out a reorganization of city hall without authority to do so independently of council approval was listed as a second count of defamation.

The statements were not protected by “qualified privilege” since they were made maliciously, considering Clark knew council had approved the changes, according to the lawyer.

“We hereby demand on behalf of our client that you apologize for your defamatory behaviour,” Floden and Company lawyer Craig Floden wrote.

“We further demand that you cease and desist from any further defamation of our client, failing to do so we will seek instructions to sue on this matter,” the letter concluded.

The letter was sent to Clark on Nov. 21, 2023.