With the help of his fellow councillors, the County’s Deputy Reeve, Rick Butler, is crafting a councillor code of ethics.
Creation of the document was one of his campaign promises, and the finished code is intended to set guidelines about how councillors make decisions and conduct business.
“It codifies or clarifies those grey areas,” said Butler. “The big ones are about transparency and how do we make sure we are doing public business in public. Doing the public business in public, sometimes it is messy. Sometimes we say things we maybe shouldn’t have said, but at least everyone can see why and how we are making decisions.”
Butler said creation of the code has been more challenging than he expected, especially in regards to dealing with developers.
“In the spirit of transparency and accountability, my personal policy has been no meetings with developers who have a formal application or proposal in the process,” stated Butler in a letter. “However, at the same time, I want to meet with local residents and landowners who may be potential developers to answer their enquiries.”
Butler added that he will try to strike the balance between accessibility and transparency in the document.
According to Butler, he and several other councillors have been reading similar documents from other municipalities, such as Calgary and Cochrane, and collecting information to include in Rocky View’s ethics code. He is hoping the resulting document will be simple and concise and is open to input from residents.
Butler said the motivation for the document came while running his election campaign last fall.
“Some of the people that were on my team really wanted to see this,” said Butler. “They wondered about some of the relationships with developers.”
Division 8 Councillor Al Sacuta, who has been helping Butler with the draft document, said the code of ethics will likely be brought before council for approval within the next four to six weeks.
“It will be particularly helpful for newbie councillors, who are trying to get their heads around how to conduct business,” he said.
