Kingsgate Report - Medicine Hat Mayor Clark's Response to Code of Conduct Complaint
The Kingsgate Report is heavily redacted, some pages are nothing but blank blocks.
In the complaint filed by Councillor Sharps against Medicine Hat Mayor Linnsie Clark, it concludes -
“FINDING:
The investigator finds there is sufficient evidence to establish that the Respondent violated the Code by failing to treat the City Manager with courtesy, dignity and respect and maliciously injuring the professional or ethical reputation of the City Manager during their exchange at the August 21, 2023 Council meeting. This allegation is substantiated.”
🔵Mayor Clark's Response to the Code of Conduct complaint filed by
Councillor Shila Sharps one day after the Shitshow Showdown
Below are excerpts from the Respondent’s (Mayor Clark) interview statement:
• During the August 21st Council meeting, I know that everyone in the room was upset. It was very clear they were gesturing while I was talking, and it was a very tense situation for sure. But I had tried to provide this information repeatedly to the City Manager in our one-on-one meetings and I did do it at our July 4th Council meeting, which was the first time Council met to discuss this reorganization.
• The layoffs had already occurred and no one else on Council seemed to really be interested in what I believe is doing our job.
• In the community it was obvious that layoffs had occurred without Council first passing a resolution, which was Council's authority to do. I wanted to understand how that happened so it wouldn't happen again in the future. I was very clear with Council on both July 4th and during the August 16th workshop that the AO Bylaw had been violated. That shouldn't have been a surprise to them regardless of who was saying it. I had been very clear about that the entire time. I wish that my words would've been believed, but at the August 16th gathering it was, well, this is how we did it before. REDACTED
• And it also hadn't been done that way before.
• REDACTED I mean it is clear in the community. I didn't cause it to be the case that our bylaw was violated. I just said that it was, and REDACTED
• REDACTED And it was clear because the layoffs had already happened, and the reorg. had already happened. All staff knew that the reorg. had happened, they had been notified. It was clear that Council didn't approve that reorg. and it was clear in the documents that were provided to us that we were currently in violation of our AO bylaw. I didn't cause that to be the case. I just wanted to understand how that happened and how we can prevent it in the future.
• I didn't get this far during the August 21st Council meeting, but if we are making these changes, we need to understand the risks. We must understand what this reorg. means for the City.
• If something is Council’s decision to make, we're asking the right questions and making sure we're satisfied with the answers before just rubber stamping something. REDACTED
• It feels like it almost seems like people think I created that situation. I didn't. I was just trying to make sure that it was understood how we got here, what could have been done better so that maybe in the future we need to have a different process.
• My job is to ask questions. My job is to get to the bottom of things.
• It would be different if this was someone from Parks presenting before Council, but REDACTED
• REDACTED I think that as the Mayor and a politician, the public needs to believe that the municipality has integrity and just sweeping things under the rug doesn't do that. If we would've just rubber stamped it, why would the community trust us to do our jobs? REDACTED
• But it had already decided and done before it came to Council.
• REDACTED
• The City’s gone through multiple reorgs., lots of change. Employees are very fatigued. So, we need to think carefully about reorganizing everything. Mental health scores are very low in our organization. REDACTED
• Even retention is something that we need to consider before doing a reorg. Obviously, it has to be based on the advice of the City Manager and Administration and Legal, but it was Council’s decision to make. And that should have happened before the layoffs, the reorg., the announcing to staff, announcing to the public.
• The City Manager reports to Council. Council provides direction as per the MGA. Previously though, the mayor was full-time and they just had more discussions, weekly meetings and exchange of information with the City Manager.
• It was in these one-one-one meetings, when the REDACTED
• The City Solicitor wasn't present for the July 4th closed session, which is unusual. REDACTED
• The City Manager called it a legal opinion from the City Solicitor, but I don’t know if it was a written opinion. REDACTED
• The City Solicitor reports to the City Manager. REDACTED
• There was never any discussion about Council seeking an external legal opinion regarding the AO Bylaw and the reorg.
• No one else on Council really had concerns. REDACTED
• REDACTED We're supposed to follow our bylaws. It's a Council decision until Council approved it. REDACTED
• In the City Solicitor’s briefing note, which came forward to Council on August 21st REDACTED
• I contacted Guy Giorno to obtain a legal opinion. Yes, I paid for it personally. But then on August 22nd, REDACTED
• By the August 21st Council meeting everything was already public. The reorg. had already been announced. It was public. REDACTED
• REDACTED
• The August 21st Council meeting was the first time I disclosed to Council that I had obtained an external legal opinion. I don't know that I intended necessarily to mention it during the meeting. I had it with me. I thought depending on how the conversation goes, I had it with me, but it obviously wasn't my go-to, REDACTED
• But it seemed to me during my questioning of the City Manager, it REDACTED
• I don't know what all the risks were. REDACTED
• What I said in the public meeting on August 21st are just facts. That is the case. That's truth. Whether I say it out loud or not, the fact is, in the section that I read from the opinion, if Council approves it now, then it resolves those risks or at least the risks that I knew about or I had considered.
• REDACTED Council Had now done its piece. REDACTED
• REDACTED
• REDACTED
• REDACTED
• REDACTED
• REDACTED
• I asked Guy Giorno if it would be acceptable for me to disclose the legal opinion, and he said, because it was my legal opinion that I could disclose it and that he didn't see an issue with it. Even in the context of the code of conduct, he didn't see any reason why that would be unacceptable.
• REDACTED
• REDACTED
• The public knew what happened
• REDACTED
• We're not doing our jobs and we have obligations to be oversight in government governance and actually do our job. It's a very serious criticism about the last Council.
• REDACTED
• REDACTED
• REDACTED
• REDACTED
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