SANDRA M STANWAY
Brooks Bulletin
Members of the city-county joint services committee have agreed for now to leave the member-at-large position as is on Grasslands FCSS while other portions of the agreement have been OK’d.
The issue of membership has been going on since last October when the member municipalities Rosemary, Duchess and Brooks appointed a councillor and a member at large while the county appointed a second councillor as the member-at-large instead of appointing one of the two public members who had applied. One of the applicants was the previous chair and the other was a county resident who was temporarily living in the city while his house was being constructed.
Victoria Muhlbeier, executive director of Grasslands FCSS, told joint services last week that some of the board members believe the at-large position should be a community member and not a second councillor.
“FCSS is meant to be a grassroots initiative where it is different in every community across the province. They feel that having those community members really provide a grassroots perspective,” she said.
She admitted that it is often difficult to find community volunteers and if there is more than one councillor on the committee from any given municipality it can be viewed as an unfair balance of power.
“They have more of a council-driven perspective rather than a community perspective. My fear in saying it’s left up to the municipalities to decide whether they want a councillor or a community member is we would have more municipalities leaning towards putting two councillors on,” she said.
“Then we would completely lose that community perspective.”
She said her priority is to ensure the committee remains a regional entity.
County councillor Greg Skriver said an elected member is elected by the community and has the community in mind.
“I don’t really see a lot of difference between a member-at-large and someone that’s on a council. That council doesn’t really have an agenda per se, as to how things go and it’s still community representation,” he said.
County councillor Neil Johnson said joint services is bringing up a problem that doesn’t exist while Duchess mayor Tony Steidel responded that the issue should never have been raised.
“At that time there was a problem with a member on the board,” city councillor Joel Goodnough said to county officials.
“The idea is to have citizen engagement. There are elected officials and there is a difference having two elected officials on the same board versus an elected official and a county citizen. They’re going to bring a different perspective.”
Following the 30-minute discussion that has been part of municipal council meetings and joint services meetings, county councillor Kelly Christman said, “It’s a mute point. We’re at a stalemate.”
Muhlbeier said she is pleased that the municipalities have agreed to attach a time limit to councilor appointees.
“We’ve had some really long standing members on our board who bring great value and we appreciate all their contributions but it’s always good to have fresh, new ideas,” she said.
