City Hall Showdown

City Hall Showdown

Alex McCuaig

Freelance journalist

Three months following the impeachment of Mayor Linnsie Clark by her fellow elected officials on council, the unredacted report forming the basis for her drastic sanctions is now available.

The uncensored Kingsgate report filed as part of a judicial review of Medicine Hat council sanctions contains the full allegations made by Coun. Shila Sharps against the mayor while giving a peek into the decision-making process at city hall.

Shila Sharps - Community TV image bank

Central to the allegations are attempts by Clark to ensure council procedure was followed regarding approval of a re-organization of staff at city hall. And the mayor’s questioning of city manager Ann Mitchell about that process during an August 2023 council meeting.

“It’s no deal breaker for me that we’re ratifying the city manager’s decision after the fact on the reorganization,” Sharps told Kingsgate investigator Michael Solowan, a statement which was redacted from the city’s release of the document.

But it appeared to be one for Clark.

“Three members of the executive were at the city during the last reorg and they knew how it was supposed to happen,” Clark told Solowan in her statement which was redacted. “How is it that at no point anyone said, ‘oh, we need council approval on this. Or is it just like we misunderstood what section 6 of the AO (administrative organization) bylaw meant. Or some reason why we just completely disregarded our bylaw for six months.”

Clark stated she had attempted to communicate this point several times to Mitchell since she began the process of the reorganization in early 2023. and to the rest of council on July 4, 2023. Staff were informed of the changes, which included layoffs, on June 27.

“Each time I raised my concerns one-on-one with the city manager, it was dismissed. She said section 6 shouldn’t be in your bylaw anyway, so she didn’t have to follow it,” Clark said in her redacted statement to Solowan. According to Clark, Mitchell claimed to her and the rest of council on July 4, 2023 to have received a legal opinion from city solicitor Ben Bullock which cleared her for doing the staff reorganization outside of the terms of the AO bylaw. Those claims, if substantiated, appear to be false based on the email exchanges filed with the court from Bullock himself.

“I never gave that advice,” stated Bullock in an Oct. 23, 2023 email to Mitchell in response to a query on the topic. In an email response to Clark’s based on that query more than three months later, Bullock reiterated the point directly to the mayor.

“In your e-mail you made reference to advice I allegedly gave Ann (Mitchell) in regards to the corporate restructuring that took place last year,” stated Bullock’s Feb. 6, 2024 response to the October query. Bullock noted he was not present at the July closed council meeting where Mitchell’s claim of seeking legal advice was allegedly made. “It appears there has been some kind of misunderstanding.”

In an email from the mayor to Mitchell on Oct. 24, 2023, Clark followed up on comments from a meeting held two weeks earlier in which the city manager said she would provide the legal opinion.

Within a week, Mitchell replied she couldn’t as she was advised by city contracted lawyers the opinion, “must remain confidential under the Human Resources Department.”

The email chain also includes a note from Sharps which opened with an apology for the rushed nature of it due to the fact she was vacationing in Mexico.

“The accusations in social media claims that we are not accomplishing anything are both highly irritating and childish, however I am beginning to perceive a sense (of) unfortunate truth behind these criticisms as we continuously find ourselves addressing matters that are beyond our jurisdiction,” stated Sharps in her Oct. 30, 2023 email.

Shortly after starting her job in early 2023, Mitchell changed the position of city clerk so as the position would report directly to her but subsequently discovered the city’s. administrative bylaw wasn’t followed, according to Sharps’ statement to Solowan.

Mitchell apologized to council for that oversight in February, according to an unredacted statement from Sharps.

However, during the conversation on the topic during the. Aug. 21 council meeting, Mitchell said she could not recall when that first of several reorganizational steps took place.

In a single sentence redacted from Sharps’ statement describing moving the city clerk position from reporting to the city solicitor to Mitchell it was indicated then city clerk Arlene Karbeshewski, “was ecstatic about the change.” However, Karbeshewski was gone from that position by June 2023 and replaced by Larry Randle. Subsequently, Randle stopped acting in that position earlier this year with the city posting the position again. The city clerk position also carries the title of FOIP coordinator.

Despite the brewing tensions between the city manager and mayor, in redacted portions of the report, Sharps said she and the rest of council were “blindsided” by the questioning of Mitchell during the Aug. 21, 2023 open council meeting.

“I was in shock (at the Aug. 21 council meeting) thinking what the hell just happened. We were all in shock just hoping the city manager would not quit,” Sharps told Solowan.

According to Sharps’ redacted statement, “The city solicitor is always in room with us. Why didn’t the mayor ask the city solicitor to weigh in if she was concerned that proper process wasn’t followed?”

In total, Sharps leveled six allegations against Clark for violations under the city’s code of conduct bylaw. Those include not informing council she had sought an outside legal opinion regarding the legality of not following the AO bylaw, trying to mislead the public, not being fair in her treatment of Mitchell nor treating her with courtesy.

In his report, Solowan boiled those allegations down to two; That the mayor “blindsided” council with an outside legal opinion and that she maliciously or falsely injured Mitchell’s professional reputation.

The outside legal opinion found there were issues with how council proceeded with its reorganization.

Solowan dismissed the complaint of wrongdoing in the mayor seeking independent legal advice but and substantiated the allegation Clark treated Mitchell disrespectfully during the questioning of the city manager.

However, no recommendations as to sanctions were provided.

Clark filed for a judicial review of council’s decisions in May followed by supporting documents in June, including the unredacted Kingsgate report.

As part of the review, Clark is seeking a review of the investigation as well as council’s decision to sanction her.

If the court finds in her favour, she’s asking to quash council’s decision to sanction her, declare that decision invalid, reinstatement of her mayoral authorities along with back pay as well as costs incurred in bringing the action.

A one-day special chamber hearing will be heard on Aug. 13 at Calgary Court of King’s Bench.