RM Mckillop - Council Meeting - April 25, 2023
- BY JENNIFER ARGUE, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
April 25th, 2023
The Council of the RM of McKillop has voted to comply with the letter sent by Don McMorris, the Minister of Government Relations, stating that both the RM and the resort villages go to mediation over the long-standing dispute around the maintenance of the RM-owned access roads into resort villages of Glen Harbour, Island View, Pelican Point and Sunset Cove.
The Minister wrote the February 24th letter to the RM as a result of the Saskatchewan Urban Municipalities Association's request to the Minister that he authorize the Saskatchewan Municipal Board (SMB) to make a decision on the matter. He wrote, “I feel this is the first step in working towards a suitable resolution in this matter…If the dispute has not been resolved through mediation, legislation provides an opportunity for the matter to be referred to the SMB for a decision..”
The RM says they are doing what the Act requires to keep the road safe by grading, mowing the ditches, and removing snow. They have also slowed the speed down to 30 km/hr. The resort villages take issue with those claims.
After the meeting, LMT reached out to Tom Fulcher, the spokesperson for the Resort Villages. He wrote, “In reply to the discussions recently held by the RM council, we believe that the RM is continuing to provide misinformation to their ratepayers over this matter.
Our resort villages have made a formal request to the Minister to have this long standing issue formally resolved by the Saskatchewan Municipal Board. If an agreement cannot be reached though the upcoming dispute resolution process, the Minister will then direct the Saskatchewan Municipal Board to put forth a binding decision on this matter. We are extremely pleased with this outcome. Therefore, out of respect towards this process, which we initiated, we feel that any further public comments would not be appropriate at this time.”
Council voted to invite former Councilor Gary Dixon to head to the mediation table with Reeve Bob Schmidt. Dixon was formerly the Division 4 councillor who lost his 2023 re-election bid at a vote of 90 to 22 to newcomer Mark Strong. Reeve Bob Schmidt said, “Now our big thing is, who are we going to appoint? I don’t think it's in our best interest to appoint anybody on council.” When a councillor asked, “Who?” Reeve Schmidt responded, “We have a councillor who has been through this all; Gary Dixon can go on our behalf.”
Gary Dixon also holds the position of President for the lobbying group Provincial Association of Resort Communities of Saskatchewan( PARCS), a position he held while on council. Their website describes the organization as “ an independent lobby organization and continues to represent resort village and organized hamlet issues with all levels of government as well as with SUMA and SARM.”
Councilor Bondar said, “I think we should have somebody from council representing us.” There were suggestions of sending more than two council members and possibly including the Public Works Manager, Travis Herman. This will be the first time the two parties have met at the mediation table, despite negotiations for the past two years.
Schmidt said the Minister’s letter referenced a list of issues from the Resort Villages. “At no time did they send us this list…so we are going to go blind into mediation.” Council decided to ask for the list of issues provided to the Minister.
Councilor Gary Gilbert suggested because they have been trying for years to resolve the issue, the RM go straight to arbitration with the SMB rather than “wasting” the money on mediation. “I’d just as soon say, just tell us what’s happening and save the money.” Reeve Schmidt said that by accepting the Minister’s recommendation, “it looks like we are taking steps to come to an agreement.”
Councilor Arndt expressed concern that if it is decided at SMB, the RM would be restricted in what they could do and potentially be required to maintain the roads at the same level as “all the other roads in the RM.”
Council will also request representatives from each Village attend though they acknowledged they couldn’t control who was sent. The Resort Villages have agreed to have one spokesperson speak on behalf of the group, Tom Fulcher. He is a current councilor at Sunset Cove and was the former Mayor. The RM has been trying to negotiate separately with each Village. In a Sept 2021 meeting, Reeve Schmidt said, “Ultimately we should be negotiating that individually with each village.” Then Councilor Dixon said he didn’t disagree, “but we have tried to get them to the table, we have tried the divide and conquer routine…which is the way to go, I agree, but it hasn’t worked.”
Councilor Mark Strong then said he wanted to know the position of the RM representative they sent. This statement was not responded to during the discussion.
“We don’t have any issue with regular vehicle traffic. All of our issues are in the heavy-weight vehicles. It’s the heavy-weight water truck, sewer truck, garbage truck, construction truck that will come in and will destroy our road. It will be wet, and they don’t care when they come in,” said Reeve Schmidt.
CAO, Camille Box, said that the resort villages have always said that there should be road maintenance agreements, but those are not the appropriate types of agreements and are typically for short-term hauling projects.
Reeve Bob Schmidt said he would contact Gary Dixon to invite him. LMT has attempted to contact Reeve Schmidt, Former Councilor Dixon and all of the Council for an update if the invitation has been accepted.
The only response has been from Councilor Mark Strong, who said, “This was not voted on and was not an invitation from all of council.” LMT informed him that the invitation was included in the motion, and he responded, “Well then I misunderstood the motion if that is the fact. I think we would still need to vote on the person as a council. Also I would say it should be a member of council or all of council who should take part in the mediation.”
