At Tuesday's Committee of the Whole meeting - Williams Lake Council will receive a letter from Joy Hennig a Director of the Cariboo Foundation Hospital Trust who expresses several concerns about their rental of the Gibraltar Room on November 24th, 2012 and requests Council to refund the rental fee of the Gibraltar Room of $912.01.
Meanwhile - the City's Geoff Paynton (Director of Community Services) fires back, in an email to the City's Acting CAO Geoff Goodall, City Manager of Legislative Services Cindy Bouchard and the Cariboo Regional District's Manager of Community Services Darron Campbell, by categorically denying all of the concerns raised by Ms. Henning and suggests that individuals, on behalf of the Trust who set up the event on Nov 24th, were rude/disrespectful towards City Staff at the Recreation Complex in renting of and setting up of the Gibraltar Room.
While not in the information package - there is no formal suggestion that Ms. Hennig was informed that this item was going to Tuesday's meeting, although previously, any letters addressed to the City of Williams Lake, the usual practice of the City is to inform the writer where their letter was being forwarded to and which City Staff person or City Department to contact if they wished to follow up on their letter
Given Mr. Paynton will make a compelling argument to Williams Lake City Council on this subject, I would suggest it is more likely than not that Committee of the Whole will recommend WL Council deny the refund request of $912.01 from the Cariboo Foundation Hospital Trust
Read the 'potentially explosive' item here
Also - Committee of the Whole at its' meeting Tuesday will consider a request from the Fraser Basin Council in painting a 'Celebrating Diversity' mural at Jubilee House (former Jamboree Hotel). View the request here. This request should easily pass Committee of the Whole and become official at the Dec 18th WL City Council meeting
3 comments:
Ooops...guess Mrs. Hennig didn't realize there was video surveilance footage available to fact check!
Don't you hate it when you get caught telling a fib??!!
I find it very distasteful that items like this are even brought out into the public.
Both sides have claims and I as a citizen am in no position to judge if Mrs. Hennings claims over issues are any more true than those of Mr. Paynton.
Issues like this should be delt with face to face with only the parties involved.
If all future complaints are to be aired in public as this one is, will anyone ever have the the guts to come forward and complain about anything that they feel is unjust? In my opinion, handling the issue in this way only puts out the message that if you complain we will publicly defend every allegation and in return make you look really bad.
Lets face it every story had two sides and to counter the lights went off with ya but you were rude is just childish and extremely unproductive.
Having vast experience working in the public sector I find this very interesting. I note that the response from Mr. Paynton does clearly say that this matter is not something he feels should be dealt with at a Joint Committee (public) level and is operational in nature. He also notes that Mrs. Hennig never contacted him but instead chose to write to Council and CRD. As anyone who has ever worked in government knows this changes the ball game and limits how an item can be dealt with by staff. Essentially they must now wait for direction from Council and/or CRD before they can respond. By the looks of the repsonse I would guess it was never meant for public consumption and was an information tool for Council and CRD.
I wonder who made the call to put this on an agenda??.....me thinks there is only one person who can make that call. Definitely should have been dealt with administratively.
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