Ward system commission going forward
By Al Beeber - Lethbridge Herald on August 10, 2022.
LETHBRIDGE HERALDabeeber@lethbridgeherald.com
Lethbridge city council on Tuesday gave third reading to a bylaw establishing a commission to examine the establishment of a ward system here.
The item was the first on the list at a special council meeting which mainly focused on homeless camps and a potential site for a temporary sober shelter.
Bylaw 6374 was prepared using the framework presented at the June 7 meeting of city council. At that meeting, council approved a one-time budget of up to $297,000 for the commission.
The third reading on Tuesday was approved unanimously shortly after the meeting started. Councillor Rajko Dodic was absent from the meeting.
The bylaw establishes the electoral ward boundary commission as a council committee. That commission is being empowered to “examine, analyze, engage stakeholders and produce a final report on the use of a ward system to be submitted to council.”
The commission will examine numerous matters including if the city would benefit from a ward system. It will also consider the number of wards and number of councillors per ward. It will also look at a possible hybrid system which includes councillors-at-large and running in a specific ward.
Boundaries and the number of electors per ward will also be considered as well as future growth projections for the cities and significant barriers, both natural and man-made.
The commission will draft an electoral ward boundary council policy that delineates processes and procedures for establishing, reviewing and adjusting ward boundaries in the future.
The commission will include eight members, seven of them voting members appointed from the general public by council.
Several skills and backgrounds will be considered by council for appointments. The City Clerk will be a non-voting member of the commission while the chair and vice chair will be appointed by commission members at their first meeting.
A non-binding question on the ballot of last fall’s municipal election asked voters “do you support using a ward system to elect city councillors (other than the mayor) starting with the 2025 municipal election?”
Of the 28,348 who voted – which was about 35 per cent of eligible voters – 55.69 per cent voted “yes” while 44.31 per cent voted “no” to the non-binding question.
Follow @albeebHerald on Twitter
15-14
I believe that there needs to be a release of information to the citizens of this city to openly show all the costs of moving to the ward system.
I heard one Councillor state that doing so will cost an annual cost of over $300,000 for wages since the Councillors will need to be full-time.
Right now they are not full time unless they have assigned postings.
The public needs to be made aware and not just a news release, they need multi-media release in all areas, including on the City website and perhaps public information meetings held in various parts of the city.
We need to be better informed and that the question on the ballot should have been backed up by the costs of doing so! I am sure if people were informed, the answers would have leaned more to the ‘NO’!
It appears that this Council is not listening the public once again, not even a year after the election, but listens to the non-profits and allows the Blackfoot Confederation to run this city by threatening to do business elsewhere, as we heard by more than one of their leadership and/or Mr. Plaited Hair. The spring committee/Council meeting saw threats to take their business to Calgary and to revoke the Mayor’s Blackfoot name given to him and requeste his Blackfoot head-dress be returned.
This is our city and if we don’t wake-up and stand up for it, we will see our downtown devastated further and our city’s reputation further destroyed.
We are the taxpayers whose ancestors built this city with their blood, sweat and tears and their tax dollars!
The Ward system is not going to help this problem! We need to remind them who they are paid to represent!