ATHABASCA — Athabasca County councillors didn’t hold back in showing their displeasure at being caught in the middle of the ongoing 'Keep Athabasca in Athabasca University' campaign, as council heard from both sides of the contentious issue at its last meeting.
At their June 8 meeting separate presentations were made to council, first from the ad hoc committee represented by former AU professor, director of the Faculty of Business, acting vice-president of administration and director of administration Mavis Jacobs, followed by current chief of staff Gilbert Perras and AU's interim president Deborah Meyers.
Coun. Dennis Willcott was quick to ask Jacobs what would be accomplished by the county chipping in for a lobbyist and would a lobbyist really make more of a difference than council would. The Town of Athabasca council agreed to pay $7,500 toward a lobbyist, while the county opted to try to set a meeting with AU brass.
“I've got some questions,” said Willcott. “If you've got the money, are you guys going to do better than what we're doing right now? We've worked with the university for a long time; since I've been on council – 11 years — and have a very good working relationship with them. So, for me to give you the money and fight against them, now we got a problem.”
Jacobs admitted there is no guarantee a lobbyist would change anything, but it is the only way to access connections with ministers, deputy ministers and have meaningful engagement with the government.
“The community will lose so much that it's a very, very modest investment in making the best case forward,” she said. “And I think there's a win-win in here, which could slow down the process, look for a hybrid model, so that the university can continue to succeed here. We can continue to work with them, and let's help them bring more jobs to Athabasca, because the onus is on us as well. We have a role to play in profiling Athabasca as a wonderful place to work and live.”
Willcott admitted he’s annoyed at the board of governors for not being more open about what is going on.
“I don’t have that much education, but I don't think I’m that stupid I don’t know there’s something up,” said Willcott. “So, I’m really disgusted on top of this. I got an e-mail a year ago that's the way that they're going to go, but they said when the virus hit that just pushed them a little quicker so somebody on the board of governors must have known what they were doing, and we were never told. That's why I'm so ticked off.”
When Perras and Meyers met with council afterwards, they aimed to dispel what they said was incorrect information the ad hoc committee was using, saying the low numbers of people working on campus was due to the pandemic.
“Also, it seems that some will keep on confusing our current plans with a fully virtual strategy and suggesting that we should go with a hybrid model,” Meyers said. “Our plan for a new virtual strategy is a hybrid model.”
The question Coun. Christi Bilsky had was why hasn’t AU reached out to the committee to clear up any misunderstandings.
“So, now I am curious – or stumped — I don't know,” she said. “You said they haven't reached out to you but you would think to … keep things in the spirit of collaboration and not cause a divide among community members … why haven't the two of you got together?”
Meyers replied she doesn’t know how the ad hoc group thinks they know more than AU does about a near virtual model when AU hasn’t even determined what it will look like.
“If you don't know what it means, but it's going to be implemented by December of 2021 that scares me a little because you should know,” Bilsky said. “This is coming down the pike and (that’s) the date, you would think there would be more information out about it.”
It also wasn’t enough of an answer for Coun. Dwayne Rawson.
“It's quite clear that you have a group that's working on this near virtual whatever it is,” Rawson said. “We also have a group here that's concerned with what the university is doing. It seems like communication is a huge gap. Why wouldn’t you guys – when you know this group is out there – why wouldn’t you invite them to send a couple players to sit with your group?”
Willcott told Perras and Meyers he wanted to continue the good working relationship with AU, pointing out the Athabasca Regional Multiplex and Edwin Parr Composite school are on land donated by AU.
“But if I thought that the university was going to shut down, take the jobs from here, I would fight by any means I can because the university is very, very important to us and we all know that.” he said.
AU executives appear to have heard the message from council and soon reached out to the ad hoc group, setting a meeting for June 16.
