Everyone makes mistakes, so the fact there was a miscommunication between city administration and city council about the Potters Canada deal is forgivable, the mayor says.
Several city councillors expressed their disappointment about city administration’s lack of clarity regarding a new landfill deal with glass recycler Potters Canada during the recent city council meeting. In particular, councillors called out city administration for not providing an email that could have cleared up the situation during a private debate at the Jan. 25 executive committee meeting.
Mayor Fraser Tolmie spoke about the situation during a media scrum after the Feb. 1 regular meeting. He explained that Potters Canada contacted his office before the meeting since it had information it wanted to share. This was desirable since council wants information that looks at both sides of an issue before making a decision; in this case, it appears an email was lost.
“Those things happen. It just happened to me concerning a family member over in the U.K. (who) we’ve lost,” Tolmie said.
“You know what? I think the motion that was brought forward from Coun. (Dawn) Luhning is reflective of what our intention is to deal with businesses in the community,” he added, “so we’re going to put our best foot forward and contact Potters Canada and talk to them about their future and partnership with the city.”
Tolmie added that noone likes to be caught by surprise, whether it’s council or city administration, but since a mistake has happened, the goal is to figure out how to fix that in the future. With this issue, council addressed the situation during its meeting, it had a conversation with administration, and it will find solutions so this either doesn’t happen regularly or again.
“We’re not here to beat up on people. I make mistakes all the time,” Tolmie added. “I expect a certain amount of grace in my life, and so I think we have to have a certain amount of grace when someone says, ‘It’s in my inbox, it’s overlooked.’”
City administration acknowledges that a mistake happened, but council was able to make a decision and move forward, city manager Jim Puffalt said in a separate media scrum. He is “very concerned” when mistakes occur since he believes city administration’s record shows this doesn’t happen very often.
“Sometimes inadvertent mistakes happen. We’re striving for 100-per-cent perfection on this,” he added. “Our goal is full disclosure and provide full information to council so they can make a decision. On occasion, as the mayor (said), things get missed, and that’s what happened (Feb. 1).”
The next regular council meeting is Tuesday, Feb. 16.
