Council Fires Embattled City Manager

City manager Ann Mitchell. (File Photo)

City council voted Monday to provide notice to city manager Ann Mitchell that her employment with the municipality will be terminated.

The vote was preceded by council accepting an investigation report.

The move comes two months following Mitchell being suspended and investigation launched during a July 28 special council meeting.

Neither the reasons for Mitchell’s termination notice nor the nature of the investigation report were elaborated on during Monday’s meeting.

Coun. Ramona Robins was the sole vote against a termination notice being issued to Mitchell.

Mitchell, however, will continue to be on a leave of absence with pay.

City council’s subsequent motion attached to the city manager’s termination notice may be foreshadowing further issues.

That motion included funding lawyers in relation to Mitchell’s termination.

Those funds will be required to come from city reserves as council heard there is not enough of the city manager’s $500,000 contingency fund budgeted for 2025 remaining to cover the costs.

The city’s manager’s continency fund was tapped to fund the investigation report.

Mitchell’s initial suspension and launch of the investigation came within a week of a municipal inspection report being released which found the city was being operated in a “irregular, improper and improvident manner.”

That report also highlighted Mitchell’s term as being marked by dysfunction within city hall.

In the Dec. 20, 2022 city release announcing Mitchell’s hiring, Mayor Linnsie Clark stated, “we are excited to have Ann bring her years of experience in the role as CAO to the City of Medicine Hat. We are confident that we will grow and thrive under her leadership.”

Within 12 months of that release, Mitchell and Clark were involved in a verbal dust up at a council meeting, the mayor was embroiled in an investigation linked to her actions during that meeting and the city manager was threatening to sue the mayor.

By the early spring 2024, council voted to impose harsh sanctions against Clark essentially making her mayor in name only while slashing her salary in half following a finding of the investigation report she broke the city’s code of conduct.

That led to a subsequent judicial review of council’s sanctions with a King’s Bench justice finding city council had “no sense of proportionality” in its censoring of Clark except for seeking an apology to Mitchell.

During the first council meeting following the judicial review hearing, Clark apologized to Mitchell who in turn stated the mayor owed the whole city an apology.

The situation didn’t appear to get much better for council in 2025 which eventually led to Mitchell’s suspension in July.