The County of Barrhead received its safety fitness certification from the province but chief administrative officer Debbie Oyarzun says it comes with conditions.
Her comments were made to council during its regular meeting July 4 where Oyarzun outlined a number of administrative issues that required action to bring the county into compliance with Alberta regulations.
Council voted 5-2 to approve a $5,000 unbudgeted expense required by the province to address recommendations from the national safety code audit and directed administration to draw the funds from accumulated reserves.
“The national safety code audit is mostly for commercial carriers but recently the province has begun to audit municipalities — due to the fact we operate machinery and vehicles over the 11,000 pound weight threshold and because of that, we are now considered commercial as well,” Oyarzun said.
“They (province) came in and did an audit and we have a safety fitness certificate because of it but there are conditions attached. We are operating safely, make no mistake, but there are some administrative components that go with this certificate.”
One example Oyarzun gave, for someone in the employ of the County of Barrhead who drives one of the county’s larger commercial-rated machinery, the province requires a separate driver’s file.
“We [would] have a file for them in human resources, let’s call this person Bob, just to not name names. The problem is, with this legislation, they (province) want Bob to have a separate driver’s file in addition to the personnel one the county already has. That way, anyone coming in to audit only has to pick up Bob’s driver file and it only has driver stuff in it,” Oyarzun said.
“We have to have these kinds of records unfortunately. The problem is this legislation, Canadian legislation, Alberta has regulations and this is one of them. The driver’s abstract shouldn’t be in the HR file. It is just one of the things we were docked for in the audit.”
Oyarzun said her issue is with the province’s recommendation that the county is required to hire a consultant.
“For me, the part that is truly frustrating is that we get a report back from the province and there are recommendations in order to ensure we can carry on with a clean safety fitness certificate. One of the recommendations is that we are required to hire a consultant and we’re supposed to develop an action plan to address these housekeeping issues to comply with legislation. The recommendation, in my personal opinion, should be to implement the action plan to get these things done.”
Oyarzun said there has been a lot of conversation between the county and the province.
“With respect to the MGA review, we pushed the envelop a bit and even went so far as to secure a neighbouring municipality’s assistance in fulfilling our obligations — an inter-municipal agreement, such as the government has been pushing for all along and yet, unfortunately, the province does not consider them one of the approved consultants. We went back and forth on this. We’ve already asked for an extension. It is actually taking me more work in trying to convince them my position is the right one rather than just doing the work and getting it done,” she said.
County administration was given a list of people from whom they can hire, Oyarzun said.
However, Coun. Darrell Troock said he believes the endeavour is a waste of time.
“The government already has access to all of this information so I don’t understand why we have to spend our money on this,” he said, adding it is frustrating to hear the government giving orders disguised as recommendations.
Coun. Marvin Schatz agreed.
“What happens if we decide not to approve this budget amount and don’t grant permission to hire this consultant?” he wondered.
Oyarzun said all municipal gravel trucks would cease to operate immediately.
“Everything about this is wrong to me. I think it’s terrible. To have them [provincial government] pick the consultants, that is so wrong on so many levels. It’s OK to say we need it but it should be our choice on who we hire,” Troock said, adding in his opinion it would be better to have the trucks parked.
“To be very, very clear we have legislation we have to comply with. It’s in black and white,” Oyarzun said.
Reeve Doug Drozd agreed.
“I think the only thing we can do is go the political route here, offering the solution that we have here — an inter-municipal agreement that ticks off all the boxes, it’s a perfectly viable thing to do. We’re in a beaurocratic tangle here. I’d rather pay another municipality for this consultation than someone off the government’s hand-picked list,” he said.
Schatz agreed.
“Our MLA [Glenn van Dijken] is the shadow minister of transportation, would he not be able to help us out on this somehow? Maybe we need to put a bug in his ear,” Schatz said.
“What I was hoping to achieve, to get this off the ground, was to bring in the consultant for the very front end portion, a matter of say $1,500 and we would get them to draft the action plan which the province can sign off on,” Oyarzun said.
“Then we get rid of the consultant and bring in our municipal partner. That was my compromise, if you want to call it that. Otherwise, I worry that you start to get into the political realm and they [government] declare us non-compliant and no gravel moves,” she added.
However, council considered a no vote.
“I appreciate the work that Debbie has put into trying to find a way through this but I want to be really sure about what a no vote would mean,” Coun. Dennis Nanninga said, adding it goes against his better judgement to approve.
“It could mean two things. One, we’ll have to work with the municipal partner, get them to draft up the plan — I think its unfair to ask them that and even after we’ve done the work, they [government] could still say no and that means further delays. Our safety certificate could be pulled as well. Despite the frustrations, we have to be in compliance with these regulations, there’s no way around it,” Oyarzun said.
“It’s very difficult to vote in favour of this. It is totally out of order what they [province] are asking of us,” Nanninga said.
“This is not normal procedure for us. I’m OK with needing a consultant but being told who to hire, that’s a whole different story,” Troock added.
