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Reeve butts heads with RM of Garden River councillors

Oct 11, 2013 | 5:06 PM

The Rural Municipality of Garden River’s reeve has been no stranger to conflict since he was elected almost a year ago.

In August, Reeve Kent Buckler was the focus of a public meeting in Meath Park. Eighty-eight of the RM’s residents signed a petition asking for his resignation. Reasons included his lack of concern for the rural municipality and inappropriate spending.

He disputed those claims and refused to leave his position.

On Friday, he turned the table at the monthly meeting at the RM’s office in Meath Park.

“I pretty much asked these councillors to step down,” said Buckler.

This request came as part of Buckler’s rebuttal to councillors criticizing how he has been paying contractors.

“When they submit a bill I like to seek council approval on the invoice and then issue the cheque. There obviously is some confusion because when you receive an invoice the day before the meeting, we can’t go over the numbers and crunch the numbers and see the gravel allocations and then pay the bill,” he said.

He countered that half the councillors have disregarded the RM budget.

“Each councillor, in six divisions was allocated 3,000 yards of gravel to use at their discretion and I have some council members that are over that 3,000 yards, which equates to paying for hauling on this stuff. So they didn’t watch their numbers. So at this point that, in my eyes, is an expenditure that wasn’t approved by council,” Buckler explained.

He came to the morning’s meeting prepared with a bookmarked copy of the Municipalities Act.

In his view, the overuse of gravel breaks some of the rules laid out in the act.

The act states that a “municipality may only spend money that is included in its budget or otherwise authorized by its council,” for an emergency or legally required to be paid.

The consequence for knowingly disregarding this is that member of council is “liable to the municipality for the expenditure, investment or amount spent, as the case may be.”

In the case that a council member is guilty of doing this, the act goes on to state that on top of other penalties, this person is “disqualified from holding office in the municipality or in any other municipality for a period of three years after the date of the finding of liability. ”

Buckler said the overages on gravel usage were grounds for three of the councillors to step down.

However, he said he felt he was not taken seriously when he presented this view to council.

“I’m being told by my administrator and these councillors that that’s not how the act reads.”

He plans to pursue further clarification from the province’s municipal affairs department.

Using more gravel than was allotted does have an effect on taxpayers, said Buckler.

“They’re trusting us with this money. So if we set out a budget and allocate gravel to a certain [amount] and no one’s looking after it, then we’ve already done wrong.”

He said he feels the animosity towards him that was on display this summer hasn’t gone away.

“In the meeting where the public got out of hand, pointing fingers at me, saying I’m not doing the reeve’s job. Then when I do the reeve’s job, they’re telling me I’m overstepping my boundaries.”

Other council members left soon after the adjournment of the meeting. Because of this, paNOW was unable to get further comment.

claskowski@panow.com

On Twitter: @princealbertnow