“Dumpster Fire,” Former Council Members Speak Out
Candidates and constituents at Brock Hale’s hosted event at Central Park Saturday afternoon. (Alex McCuaig)
Former Medicine Hat mayor and city councillor Ted Clugston isn’t mincing his words when it comes to the current state of affairs at the municipality.
“There’s a dumpster fire burning here next door, it’s called City Hall,” said Clugston during an interview with the Medicine Hat Owl by the courthouse. “We need to call 911 and put it out immediately. The first hundred days as far as I’m concerned.”
Clugston is one of three former council members running for councillor this election and while the other two, Bill Cocks and Brian Varga, may not have used as descriptive an analogy, their criticisms were just as biting.
A provincial municipal inspection report released in July found the city was being run in an “irregular, improper and improvident” manner, spreading blame on council, administration and especially Mayor Linnsie Clark.
It’s one of the reasons Cocks said he decided to run once more following sitting as councillor during three terms starting in 1998, coming back in 2013 for a single term.
“The dysfunction was quite apparent on council during the last term,” said Cocks.
Former Medicine Hat mayor Ted Clugston.
He said following former CAO Bob Nicolay stepping down from the position early in this council’s term, a large slate of rookie politicians was in the position of finding his replacement.
Such a decision is one of the most important a council will ever make, said Cocks, “and they came up with Ann Mitchell.”
Mitchell was suspended with pay by council at the end of July while it launched an investigation.
“If the (inspection) report is critical that the city is not being run in a proper and provident manner, most of that has to go back on her,” said Cocks.
Varga, who’s running for the sixth time this election having won twice between 2013 and 2021 as councillor, said he saw the staff he served with dwindling out of existence during this council’s term.
“As the first year went on, we saw things going away,” said Varga of the previous council’s initiatives. “And we saw people going away within the organization and it just didn’t look good at that time. Those were good people we had invested in Medicine Hat. . .There is not one person left there in the organization when we were there four years ago. All the city directors are gone now. Every one of them.”
But it’s two-term mayor and two-term councillor Clugston whose remarks regarding this current council appear to cut the deepest.
Clugston says this council demonstrated a complete lack of consensus building.
“There has been none. That’s not even an opinion. That’s a fact,” he said.
Clugston said he doesn’t want to criticize administration, highlighting the responsibility of elected officials to listen to the advice of highly educated and paid staff.
Former Hat councillor Brian Varga
“We listen but ultimately, council decides. We’re the what, they are the how,” he said, adding he would listen to that advice. “But sometimes I would say we’re doing it anyway and I would get a majority of council members on side and say we are in charge.”
Clugston said he’ll be refraining from utilizing terms like transparency and accountability during his campaign as their meaning has been lost on this council.
As for Cocks and Varga, if there’s a member of the current council who’s demonstrated any accountability for the list of 68 deficiencies found in the municipal inspection report, they couldn’t name one.
“Maybe they do, I know I would because it’s on us. It’s a team thing. Even if it is one or two or three people, it’s still on all of council,” said Varga, adding this council should have fixed what they broke. “Now we’re in the state we’re at because of that.”
Cocks said the current council needs to take responsibility for their actions over the past four years.
“Errors were made, and they are a part of the mess that is currently called our city council,” he said. “They absolutely need to own their share of it.”