Three Rocky View County (RVC) councillors are suing the County over lost wages after being cleared from previous sanctions in 2020.
Couns. Kevin Hanson, Samanntha Wright and Crystal Kissel have filed three separate small claims in the amount of $32,000 for forfeited wages that accrued after the trio were sanctioned in 2019, which caused a 30 per cent decrease in their pay.
As the sanctions were set aside in court in July 2020, the councillors feel the pay should be reimbursed. Hanson claimed Wright and Kissel should have also been re-appointed to a number of RVC’s boards after the sanctions were thrown out, but nothing happened in that regard.
“The bigger one that didn’t happen was with pay,” he said. “We were told that since we didn’t do the work, we don’t get the pay, and they chose not to pay us.”
The $32,000 being sought by the councillors reflects the reduced pay over the 13-month period the councillors were sanctioned.
After a number of talks back and forth between the councillors and RVC, Hanson said the County didn’t budge with its position.
“[RVC] were quite willing to move forward as long as we didn’t seek the courts or the back pay,” he said.
The issues stem from 2019, when the three councillors were sanctioned after submitting a letter to the editor to the Rocky View Weekly. RVC council deemed the councillors used discourteous and disrespectful language in the letter.
Further, Kissel breached RVC’s code of conduct by characterizing Chief Administrative Officer Al Hoggan’s behaviour as “infantile” in a voicemail left to Deputy Reeve Al Schule.
The sanctions required the three councillors to publicly apologize, restricted their ability to travel on behalf of and represent RVC, removed them from all council committees and bodies, decreased their remuneration by 30 per cent and limited their contact with County staff. According to Justice James Eamon, the judge who dropped the sanctions last summer, the travel restrictions expired June 11, 2020. The committee and remuneration sanctions were set to expire at an organizational meeting scheduled in October “or at council’s discretion,” and the sanction related to staff communication did not have a corresponding timeline.
Hanson said when Coun. Daniel Henn was appointed as the County’s new reeve in October 2020, he thought there would be a possibility an appeal would be filed to review the dropped sanctions.
“No one wanted to forget it, according to him,” Hanson said. “When we saw this was going nowhere, we sent a demand letter [to RVC].”
According to Hanson, a letter from Nov. 8, 2020 called on RVC to pay the councillors, and that failure to do so would result in the issuance of a statement of claim.
“We gave them two weeks, one accounting cycle,” he said. “We didn’t want to cause any stress – we just asked them to please pay us.”
Hoggan, according to Hanson, relayed that council wanted to discuss the matter before moving forward. The item was to be discussed at a council meeting scheduled for Dec. 8, 2020, but the meeting was ultimately cancelled due to a spike in COVID-19 cases in Alberta. The item was then pushed to the Dec. 22 meeting.
During the meeting, according to the civil claim filed Jan. 11, the item was dealt with as a closed session item. After council's deliberation, a motion was passed to defer the request and direct administration to send the original request as to “the ramifications of the pros and cons, with a report to return by the Jan. 26. Council meeting.”
The motion passed by a vote of 5-4, with the opposing councillors being Kissel, Wright, Hanson and Reeve Daniel Henn.
Hanson said since Hoggan received the demand letter for payment six weeks prior to the Dec. 22 council meeting, the affected councillors believed there was enough time to share the letter with the reeve and the rest of council.
“It is our opinion that this latest motion, and the actions leading up to it, are simply stall tactics,” he stated in the court filing.
While the statement of claim has been filed and the three councillors await next steps, it may take some time before a resolution is met, according to Hanson. As the County’s appeal process on the judge’s rulings to drop the sanctions is still ongoing, nothing will move forward with the item until the appeal is dealt with.
RVC administration said it could not provide comment, as the matter is before the courts.
Jordan Stricker, AirdrieToday.com
Follow me on Twitter @Jay_Strickz
