April 13 Beaver County Chronicle

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A Free Weekly Publication Serving All of Beaver County Wednesday,February April 13,16 2022, Volume 15,15 Issue 15 7 Wednesday 2022 Volume Issue

Council reverses stance on campground hirings, accepts bids from two local contractors Patricia Harcourt After receiving negative feedback from residents regarding the hiring of an ‘outside’ contractor to run both county campgrounds, county council has reversed the decision. After the personnel issue came out of a closed session, some discussion revealed that the original contractor had also backed out of the deal. At the March 23 meeting, council had accepted the proposal to enter into a contract with H.Y. Cleaning Services of Edmonton to operate both Camp Lake and Black Nugget Lake for the 2022-2024 camping seasons. The vote at that meeting was split 3-2, with Reeve Kevin Smook (Division 1), Councillor Lionel Williams (Division 2) and Councillor Barry Bruce (Division 4) in favour, and Deputy Reeve Gene Hrabec (Division 3) and Councillor Dale Pederson (Division 5) opposed. Those in favour said the fact that H.Y.’s bid was thousands of dollars less than the next local bid was enough to accept it, despite its being a bid from outside the county. Hrabec and Pederson felt the bids from local contractors should have been given more weight, and disputed the financial advantage of the outside bidder by questioning the equation used to crunch the numbers.

They also complained that they could not peruse the other candidates’ tender submissions for themselves to ascertain their assertions, as these were not included in the agenda package with that of the recommended bidder. Between this meeting and the April 6 council, the county received communication concerning the dissatisfaction some residents felt that local bidders were not given what they considered a fair chance at winning the contracts. “Money isn’t everything,” said one disgruntled citizen. However, with the H.Y. Cleaning business pulling out of the agreement, council had to reconsider its options in any case. Council met in closed session at its April 6 regular meeting and when the councillors came back into the public meeting, several motions were passed reversing the earlier decision and giving contracts to two other contractors. Interim CAO Rick McDonald reminded council that H.Y. had been given the contract for both campgrounds and was no longer available. “That company has withdrawn its proposal for internal reasons,” he said, provided as a result of discussions with council. “We need to move on this fairly quickly,” as council is looking at another proposal instead. Therefore, council needed to rescind the motion from the last meeting. The motion to rescind came

from Hrabec and read: “Council rescind Motion #22-115,” which was the motion to award the campground contracts to HY Cleaning Services. “Because they (H.Y. Cleaning) can’t fulfill the contract, this motion to rescind will allow council to over-ride it,” said McDonald, regarding the original motion. Smook added that “a special concession is being made,” in the case of the motion to rescind, due to the circumstances. Once that passed, two local contractors were given the green light to operate the campgrounds. Council authorized administration to negotiate a contract with Torpy Services for Camp Lake operations/hosting; and with Vincent and Colleen Jensen for Nugget Lake campground operations/hosting. Both would be for the 2022-2024 seasons. Hrabec thanked “the proponents who came forward to fill out a proposal.” He added: “It gets us back on track absolutely supporting our local businesses.” But Williams cautioned: “If you are going to be so protective of local contractors, from now on you should have an invited bid or closed bid,” explaining that “open (bids) have to be fair.” Smook suggested this topic would be a good one for discussion at a Governance and Priorities Committee meeting.

County appoints new Chief Administrative Officer Patricia Harcourt Beaver County officially appointed a new Chief Administrative Officer (CAO) at its April 6 regular meeting of county council. Kayleena Spiess’ appointment will be effective as of April 19, with her first council meeting to be held the following day on April 20. She is coming to Beaver County after serving as CAO for Westlock County since April 2021. At that time, she took over for Westlock’s interim CAO Rick McDonald, and history appears to be repeating itself at Beaver County in 2022. McDonald had worked for Westlock County during a period of transition before turning to help out Beaver County last summer after the former CAO took a leave of absence and then was terminated by Beaver County Council just prior to the municipal elections last fall.

McDonald was hired to help with problems in the operations and functioning of administration and council, and then became this county’s interim CAO. Beaver County also passed a motion to enter into an employment agreement with Spiess, who is scheduled to start April 19. These negotiations couldn’t happen until the appointment had been made. The county indicated it will issue a press release once that process is completed. McDonald, who has been guiding the new Beaver council since its election last October, was given notice that his contract would be ending as of April 27. A motion to that effect was passed following a closed session of council. “I think you’ve done a wonderful job for us,” said Reeve Kevin Smook (Division 1). “You got the ship righted and going down the river.” Deputy Reeve Gene Hrabec (Division 3) thanked

McDonald, adding: “I appreciate all the work you did with the review,” while noting: “There are still some bumps in the road,” when it comes to implementing the review’s recommendations. Last summer, Assistant CAO Margaret Jones stepped in as Acting CAO when Beck went on leave while Rick McDonald, acting in his capacity as a consultant, was hired to conduct a municipal governance review. The review was tabled last fall and the new council accepted its recommendations. McDonald was then appointed Interim CAO and helped guide council to start implementing these recommendations on conduct and procedure and other matters. However, with the departure of McDonald it was noted that not all the recommendations had been put into place yet, a task that may possibly now fall to Spiess to help council navigate.


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