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Town of Nipawin council meeting

Review of Code of Conduct policy on packed Nipawin council agenda

Oct 10, 2023 | 10:56 AM

A lot of items are on the Town of Nipawin’s council agenda Tuesday evening, including some proposed changes to the Council Code of Conduct policy.

While some of the changes are just word modifications, one proposed change is that members will accurately and respectfully communicate the decisions of council to members of the public.

The current wording is ‘accurately and adequately’.

Nipawin has been dealing with the fallout of the resignation of Rennie Harper as mayor several months ago after an external review found some issues with her leadership.

The issues stemmed from the Code of Ethics policy, but the review raised complaints about how she interacted with staff and the public.

More changes are proposed to guide how councillors themselves can release information.

Rather than the more general guideline of limiting councillor’s discussion of information to following provincial privacy legislation, the proposal is to require all requests for confidential information to go through the Town Clerk and CAO.

A section regarding sanctions is also proposed and states that violations of the code of conduct policy will be the council’s responsibility to determine, using the advice of the CAO.

The same review that found Harper had overstepped in some areas also said that council should have done more to investigate and deal with complaints regarding her behaviour earlier in her tenure.

Much of the agenda is dedicated to eliminating previous policies on things like job descriptions, a general town office policy and signage.

Council will also discuss items like a dog park and funding for the Regional Park.

susan.mcneil@pattisonmedia.com