Mayor Linnsie Clark addresses media and supporters at the steps of city hall on March 27, 2024, days after council voted to cut her pay and duties over a conduct complaint.--News File Photo
@CollinGallant
Sanctions, reversals, reports, a court-hearing, meetings with the province and simmering subtext during city council meetings – the tension at city hall is the top story of 2024.
An audit of the city’s council procedures and potentially other underlaying issues of the rankled relationship is now underway as Medicine Hat heads into an election year in 2025.
It is also hiring an integrity commissioner to deal with complaints between elected.
That’s after a council vote found Mayor Linnsie Clark had breached its code of conduct for her dealings with city manager Ann Mitchell.
A court decision reversed most of a list of sanctions after a meeting between council and Alberta Municipal Affairs became gridlocked.
Throughout the year, Clark has suggested that she’s been blocked from accessing city hiring and expense data.
Eight other councillors pressed ahead with a redefining a council priorities list after Clark declined attending a meeting on updating the 2022 list.
And beyond the headline items, several times each meeting there are tense moments or awkward silence.
In a late December interview on another topic, Clark acknowledged 2024 has featured some unusual controversies.
“We’ve still accomplished a lot of the things we set out to, and the next year will be interesting and hopefully we can improve how we work together,” said Clark, who has maintained she is seeking to restore authority to council in city decision-making.
“The issue I have with the structure of the governance … What’s the role that mayor is supposed to be, what’s the role of council supposed to be … The model is very administrative-centric, and I hope that some of those ideas are changing.”
Coun. Shila Sharps, who launched the original complaint against Clark in 2023, said in last August that Clark’s push for reform has been a distraction, that her fine-point legal arguments should be directed at the province which could update legislation for cities.
“The code of conduct issue is not about Ann Mitchell,” she told the News this summer. “It is about (the mayor) trying to deflect and not acknowledge her behaviour.”
For the most part, eight other councillors haven’t publicly discussed the discord much this fall. That is after a judge’s ruling that many of the sanctions placed on Clark were unreasonable, and an outpouring from councillors stating frustrations with the relationship and seeming malaise at city hall.
“It’s supposed to be about social services, recreation facilities and bringing industry to the city – instead this (dispute) has monopolized our time,” Coun. Cassi Hider said on Aug. 16.
Others told the News they had little contact with the mayor outside official meetings for most of the now three-year-old term.
The issue hit the headlines in March when councillors voted to heavily censure Clark over a public argument in August 2023 over final approval of staffing changes.
Days later Clark told supporters and media at a press conference in front of city hall that she was fighting against bureaucratic creep and would ask for a judicial review of the decision.
Meanwhile, a heavily redacted version of an investigation and interviews released by the city stoked public intrigue, and that spring, Clark began publicly requesting human resource and administrative expense reports.
At the high-point of tension, lawyers for Clark and City Hall argued their respective case in a Calgary court that heard council was “gunning” for the mayor while Clark’s interactions with staff were “destructive.”
The review of sanctions found most were over the top and then reversed, including a 50 per cent pay cut, losing the chair position at council and other penalties.
That came after an all-council meeting with Municipal Affairs Minister Ric McIver, a special meeting of council and workshop with municipal consultant George Cuff.
In another standout moment, Clark offered a general apology when she resumed chairing council meetings in September – one of council’s original requests – but Mitchell quickly requested on the record that it be extended to all city staff and the larger community.
That was met with silence, and the meeting proceeded to other matters.
This fall, city hall acknowledged that freedom of information requests from the public had increased five fold – likely related to items Clark says she’s been blocked from obtaining.
Clark cast a symbolic “no” vote for the new city budget on Dec. 16, after she felt information requests related to the budget weren’t provided.
She is now looking to the results of a provincial inspection, which she said could examine some of her issues and suggest changes.
Coun. Andy McGrogan formally called for the audit in September saying, “I think the community needs to hear what we want to look like … and what the next council will look like.”
