ATHABASCA – Athabasca County is set to hire a third-party investigator for the first time in 2024 after councillors decided to treat a letter from Aspen View School Division as an official code of conduct complaint.
County councillors initially discussed the correspondence during their Feb. 20 committee of the whole meeting, voting 7-2 in favour of a motion to recommend council direct administration to enlist a third-party investigator. Councillors received the letter Feb. 12, the day before their Feb. 13 meeting, but the deadline for agenda submissions had passed and the item was deemed non-urgent.
The committee of the whole is unable to take substantive actions on behalf of the county, so councillors again discussed the motion to hire a third-party investigator during the Feb. 29 regular council meeting, this time in open session.
Councillors voted 5-4 in favour of the motion, with councillors Gary Cromwell, Joe Gerlach, Kelly Chamzuk, Tracy Holland and Rob Minns voting in favour. Councillors Natasha Kapitaniuk, Ashtin Anderson, Camille Wallach and reeve Brian Hall were opposed.
Holland also advocated to create a terms of reference for the third-party investigator, citing the uncommon circumstances in this case — per Kapitaniuk, Aspen View’s letter didn’t name the councillor the incident was about.
After some bureaucratic squabbling, including a chair appeal and two conflicting motions, councillors voted in favour of a motion to send a letter to Aspen View indicating the county takes all complaints appropriately, and is proceeding with a formal investigation.
Kapitaniuk, Wallach, Hall, and Anderson all voted against the motion, which passed with a 5-4 vote.
At the time of writing, there was no timeline available for when the investigation would be completed.
