Council cancelled
Medicine Hat won’t be having a regular council meeting in August this year with the noon-hour announcement Friday that it has no items of business to put on the open agenda.
But council will be meeting in-camera to discuss a “personnel matter.”
Despite the city’s agenda reflecting at least one topic of discussion, the city posted on social media, “Medicine Hat City Council has cancelled the August 19 regular City Council meeting due to a lack of agenda items.”
Council last held an open meeting in mid-July but won’t be holding another until Sept. 3.
The move comes during a slugfest week for the city’s elected officials with Tuesday seeing the sanctions levelled earlier this year against Mayor Linnsie Clark being challenged in front of a Court of King’s Bench. That was followed by a noon-hour feature interview on CHAT TV News on Thursday with the mayor who spoke in generalities about that court case. The week was topped off with councillors Andy McGrogan, Allison Knodel Cassi Hider and Deputy Mayor and acting spokesperson for council, Shila Sharps, teeing off on the mayor in Friday’s edition of the Medicine Hat News.
ComTV has reached out to councillors Ramona Robins, Allison Van Dyke, Robert Dumanowski and Darren Hirsch to confirm whether Sharps’ comments as deputy mayor and presiding chair are representative of council’s as a whole. The story will be updated with comment when and if received.
The Court of King’s Bench one-day hearing heard the arguments in the appeal of council’s March 2024 sanction decision which stripped the mayor of nearly all of her duties.
Counsel for Clark argued his client was effectively tied to a “whipping post” by councillors over the mayor’s questioning of City Manager Ann Mitchell during an open council meeting last summer.
Lawyers for city councillors argued council had lost “faith” in the mayor for the impugned behaviour which presiding Justice Rosemary Nation described as a two-and-a-half minute exchange between the mayor and city manager.
Check back for updates…..