Concerned Citizen’s Reaction to Council’s Report to Public

The city council of Prince Rupert has asked the committee to review a consultant prepared report on the Pond/Hess affair and submit a maximum of six questions for council to research and report back to the public at their regular council meeting of October 27, 2008. The committee has reviewed the report and is submitting the following observations and questions to Mayor Pond and city council.

The committee first expressed concern and then later outrage that the Mayor and Council disregarded their own internal policies for tendering public contracts and in our view the community charter which is the governing law for how municipalities conduct their business.

The author of the report acknowledged that the Mayor and Council chose to ignore policies that are in place to ensure that openness, transparency, fairness and accountability are in place when hiring contractors or purchasing from suppliers. He also confirms the legal opinion that the Mayor did not have the authority to enter into the contracts on behalf of the city nor were the required council resolutions passed. Mayor Herbert Pond has been unapologetic for his part in this affair and has made a point of stating that this review has been costly to the municipality. The committee will be referring the Mayor and council to the 2005 edition of the handbook for Municipal Councils which has the following advice to elected officials;

“Citizens look to politicians not only for fair treatment but also for ethical behaviour. Councils that skate on the edge of principal or discard ethics for expediency set a bad example, to put it bluntly. Citizens do not expect council to ignore the reasonable requirements of other government legislation, such as the Workers Compensation rules, nor to ignore its own bylaws and regulations. Legal shortcuts may save time and money in the short run but over the long term will cost the municipality dearly.”

“The granting of privileges and permits can be affected by bias and great care should be taken to administer these areas fairly and evenly. Failure to do so only increases the level of cynicism towards government already abundantly apparent in our society.”

The committee had been hopeful that the Mayor and council would choose an independent auditor that is free from any appearance of bias and is disappointed in the choice of Mr. Paul who is a colleague of Mr. Gordon Howie. Both Mr. Howie’s and Mr. Paul’s association dates back to at least 2002 when they both served together on the Peer Support Committee for the Local Government Management Association.

The committee notes Mr. Paul has found no evidence of interference in the performance of the Chief Financial Officers duties but is unable to determine this in the case of the incumbent Corporate Officer. While the report is careful to offer excuses or mitigating circumstances on why policies and procedures were not followed, the committee does not agree the mere fact that Ms. Hess’s name appears in minutes as an Acting Corporate Officer serves as public notice of the spousal relationship between her and Mr. Howie the Chief Administration Officer nor the potential for conflict of interest. Further, there are numerous other local contractors that were not provided an opportunity to bid on these lucrative city contracts awarded in secrecy.

The committee does not accept these excuses as reasonable for the two contract extensions provided to Ms. Hess without a normal bidding process past the date that the incumbent Corporate Officer was hired and there was no longer any urgency to have a contract Corporate Officer on hand. The need to have a temporary Corporate officer covered a span of barely three months while the Pond/Hesse contracts and renewals spanned twenty-two months.

With respect to how Freedom of Information requests are being handled by the city, we note that although council also heard concerns from another applicant regarding deficiencies in their processes, the report simply examines the handling of three FOI requests from ourselves and comes to the conclusion that the response to one was “possibly incomplete” and that the other two were handled properly. The committee notes the city has requested approximately $2,100 to fulfill the other two FOI requests from ourselves.

With this in mind the committee is submitting the following six clarifying questions to the Mayor and City Council;

1. Would the council provide full details on what activities were performed by Ms. Hess during the term of the contract and the actual output produced, reports, memo’s, position papers etc to address the committees request to ascertain whether value was received for the expenditures totaling in excess of one hundred and nine thousand dollars?
2. Would the city provide a summary on what the services were for all 2006,2007 and year to date 2008 payments made to Mr. Gordon Howie as a supplier to the city, its affiliates, commissions and companies over and above his usual salary while he served as Chief Administration Officer of Prince Rupert?
3. Would the Council kindly provide the committee of concerned citizens with the legal opinions that address the legitimacy of the contracts and procedures followed in retaining Ms. Hess’s services?
4. Would the council point the committee to the line items and internal breakouts in their 2006, 2007 and 2008 corporate administration and general corporate administration expense budgets wherein the retention of Ms. Hesse was contemplated and planned for?
5. Would the council provide the committee with the same background material provided to Mr. George Paul on which he based his conclusions and observations on together with all correspondents between the city and Mr. Paul regarding this report?
6. Would the city provide a summary of the number of FOI requests that have been received by the city over the past year showing the date of the request, the date the request was fulfilled, the time spent by staff fulfilling these requests and the compensation received by the city for FOI fulfillment.

Without being provided with the foregoing, the committee is unable to accept the George Paul report as anything more than an attempt by the city to gloss over the fact that this Mayor and Council has been conducting public business contrary to its’ own policies and good governance principles. Frankly, we see little purpose in having Mr. Paul travel to Prince Rupert to present this report which has not addressed the community concerns.