YTG Under Fire for Attacking Dawson

by Dan Davidson

Dawson’s council was not the only body on the hotseat at the March 25 public meeting. A number of people wanted clarification of the role being played by YTG appointed supervisor Andre Carrel, and the government itself.

Former councillor Shirley Pennell rose to sympathize with council.

“From what I’m hearing and from the work that’s been done by this council you are trying your very best to adhere to the finances which he has placed on the table.”

“Why is Carrel still here in our hair?” local artist Shirley Pennell wants to know. Photo by Dan Davidson

Maybe, she said, she really needed to ask her question of the territorial government: “Why is Carrel still here in our hair? Why don’t they leave us alone to let our elected council do the job which the citizens of Dawson have voted them to do?

“It seems like they don't want us to run our own affairs. I just don’t see YTG dissolving the council and doing the job better.”

Everitt said he had no problem with the appointment of an advisor, that council had worked well with the first one, Ken Hodgins, for over two years, and that comparisons between the Hodgins financial plan and the Carrel plan would show that the city was in about the same place as originally predicted. A supervisor, he said, is useful for being an advisor and a liaison to the government, if that is how the job is interpreted.

Councillor Bill Holmes cut in, “It would be nice if it came across as help. Why is YTG not stepping forward and helping us? We need to have them come and work with us. It does not have to be a bludgeoning experience.

“We’re being punished, and I don’t understand.”

The mayor said he was sure that part of the problem lay with himself, with the perception among certain members of the government that the best way to help Dawson was to drive him out of office.

“That is a fact,” said Everitt. “There are a few that, to them, they help the community by getting me to quit or finding a way to make it happen.

Everitt has already taken a pay cut and gone to being a half-time mayor, taking on two other part-time jobs as a result of Carrel’s recommendations.

“We have almost every bureaucrat in that entire government phoning to say that they cannot believe what is happening. Things are being twisted internally,” he said.

“Where is Pat Duncan’s responsibility for some of this garbage? Because Pat Duncan is the one that started the bloody process. That’s our question to the minister.”

Duncan was premier and minister of finance when the final capital funding agreement for the projects in Dawson was signed, and her government appointed the first of the two financial supervisors who have been in place since January, 2001. That official was replaced in October, 2003, shortly before issues in Dawson began to heat up.

Everitt said he had been told that Carrel was being replaced and that two government employees were nearly fired for telling him that when the draft Order in Council was rejected at a cabinet meeting later. Sources with the opposition parties confirm that they too had heard this was to have happened, but no documents were ever seen.

Everitt then joined with Holmes in making a call for a full public inquiry into the entire handling of the recreation centre project, from the initial planning, through the long negotiations over the capital funding agreement, and the design and construction problems which have plagued the project.

“We’re asking the people of Dawson to start calling for it. I’ll take my bumps, but those bumps need to go on a lot of places.”

He said he was sure that bureaucrats in the capital had been told to shred lots of the files associated with this case, but that that shouldn’t worry anyone.

“We have them all here.”

Once again Everitt admitted that he and his four councils had tried to take on too many projects at once, and said that if he had it to do over, he would handle it differently.

He said a public inquiry would get the real story out to the people of the town, the territory and even the country, for stories about the mess in Dawson have already appeared three times in Frank, the satirical magazine about politics out of Ottawa.

Late in the four hour meeting local artist John Steins took the podium.

“I think that we’re under attack by higher levels of government and I’m just trying to decide what I can do about it...”

“I can’t get over the irony that we’re paying an advisor $800 a day to tell us how much money we don’t have. I think he’s been paid ... forty thousand dollars already to ... forty grand to basically take a dump in our back yard. I find that very disturbing and offensive.

“As far as you guys are concerned, you’re one step above a volunteer group. No one’s paying you big bucks. You took a salary cut. You’re doing it out of a place of commitment, from a position of

Printmaker John Steins believes that democracy in Dawson is under assault by higher levels of government. Photo by Dan Davidson.

belief in the community, and I find it really offensive that YTG is attacking that, attacking our duly elected representatives.”

He concluded with a slam at Peter Jenkins, the town’s MLA and Minister of Health.

“How come Jenkins isn't here? He’s never around at our public meetings. He makes himself scarce.”

On that note, a group calling itself the “Political Watchdogs” ran an ad in the March 23 edition of the Klondike Sun asking the MLA when he would be holding his public constituency meeting. He has never held one since he was first elected to the office in 1996.

Government Sets New Benchmark for Arbitration Outcome

by Dan Davidson

While arbitrator Chris O’Connor has rendered his decision on the case between the City of Dawson and its contractor, TSL, it still remains to be determined how the costs of the process will be shared between the two parties. This now seems to be part of the bottom line that might determine the fate of Dawson’s elected council.

The date for that argument of costs has not been set, but it is expected to be over by the middle of April.

The details of the award have not been made public as that cannot happen without the agreement of both parties, and Don Smith of TSL has yet to be heard from on this matter. Mayor Glen Everitt initially wanted permission to release just an executive summary of the award, but the council is now suggesting that it would like to see the release of the entire 141 page document.

The decision is still being analyzed by the town’s lawyers, but TSL’s analysis has arrived at the office.

Everitt would like it all public so as to stop the rumours associated with the case, and also because the city would like Ferguson Simek Clark, the architects and engineers on the town’s projects, to get a look at it.

Everitt said, “FSC knows that they are potentially on the hook for a large chunk of whatever that ruling is and they want it (the report). Their insurance company wants it and their lawyers want it.”

Council feels that getting the information out will actually help in their case against FSC, who sent a squad of five engineers to Dawson on Thursday to determine why the purlins in the curling rink’s roof are shifting and twisting.

“As I have indicated before,” Everitt said, “we are expecting the opportunity to settle the majority of it without even going into court with FSC.”

The settlement of costs will close the book in the arbitration case and also allow for what the government now seems to have fixed as the final accounting of costs against the City of Dawson.

Earlier, in December and January, Minister Glen Hart and then Supervisor Andre Carrel had indicated that a negative outcome to the arbitration would trigger the dissolution of city council. Carrel set the figure at $1.35 million in his report at the end of January.

Now that the award has come in at substantially less than that, the story seems to be that the trigger will be determined by the total of all costs associated with the arbitration case, including legal bills, costs and interest.

In any case, Carrel has already recommended the dissolution of council over an entirely different matter, a $21,000 difference of opinion on the awarding of a garbage hauling contract. Hart has so far declined to accept that recommendation, but has supported Carrel’s right to make such demands under Section 335 of the Municipal Act.

Jorn Meier, a one-time critic of council’s handling of the arbitration case, rose to congratulate them.

“I would like to congratulate you, even though I don’t know the outcome. It seems as if you were more or less on the ball with what you were thinking. A lot of other people in town, me included, were a little bit off with their estimate of where this arbitration would come in.

“Well ... my apology for that, on my part.” There was applause from the audience as Meier said this.

He supported council’s attempt to have the ruling unveiled.

“I think everybody in this town really was looking forward to the end of this arbitration - to have it come out, finally have a result, something that we see in black and white. This is what happened. This is the ruling.

“So please do whatever you can to make it public so this town can actually get over it and start to heal, because we’ve been torn apart for a long time now and we need to get it back together.”

This was greeted with loud applause and shouts of “hear, hear.”

“We will do what we can,” Everitt assured him.