Nipawin council hires firm to investigate mayor’s conduct

By Susan McNeil

The details have not been released but the Town of Nipawin has confirmed it will hire an Alberta company to investigate the conduct of Mayor Rennie Harper.

The town’s chief administrative officer, Joel Cardinal, said council passed the resolution at the regular meeting on Tuesday, which Harper did not attend.

“That resolution reads that ‘council engage the services of Bloom CME to conduct a public investigation into mayoral conduct,’ ” Cardinal said.

He did not elaborate on what prompted the motion or provide any specifics as to what the conduct might entail but said the results will be released in time. All of the councillors in attendance voted in favour of the motion.

“Anything resulting out of that matter should be released when it is appropriate to do so, and at this point in time, that’s the information we can pass on,” Cardinal said.

According to a news release on Thursday afternoon, the investigation will take several weeks to complete.

Every councillor and Harper were contacted by northeastNOW but none chose to speak publicly about the motion.

At least a few members of the public who have been monitoring council and attending some of the meetings were willing to talk, however.

Marlon Zacharias, former president of the Chamber of Commerce, has plans to one day run for mayor and has been attending meetings in preparation.

Zacharias was at the meeting Tuesday at Nipawin Town Hall and said he was surprised when the council immediately went in-camera.

“They did something that in my recollection has never been done in Nipawin before and that was start the meeting in-camera,” he said.

He attended regularly before taking a break. He resumed attending again because things seem amiss.

“I had heard that tensions were pretty high. There’s been a lot of turnover in staff. There’s been some issues with the council apparently so I just wanted to go and see for myself,” Zacharias said.

Some of the issues seem to have sprung from a restructuring process in which at least one manager had her job change while she was on leave.

“I do think there are some issues in council,” Zacharias said. “There does appear to be some dysfunction there. I think some of it’s from council getting tied up with things and they’re just not sure how to handle them.”

He said shifts in management may also play a role as those have been changed in the restructuring process.

Another resident, Ren Lukoni, asked to speak as a delegation at a recent meeting and said at least 10 staff have left their positions, either by being fired or resigning. Two were walked out by security staff, according to community members.

A big concern for Lukoni was the elimination of the community Parks and Recreation board so she asked to have the board reinstated.

“I was concerned about no input from the community (and) from the citizens about what should happen with Parks and Rec,” she said.

She has not received a response yet but was told that much of council business goes through the operations committee or the governance standing committee.

Eliminating the recreation board reduces the ability of everyday citizens to be heard about concerns or wishes as the only avenue they now have is a councillor, rather than appealing to the board.