Councillor Colleen Tatum told MyMcMurray she doesn’t feel it is in the best interest of the public for her to resign from her Ward 1 council seat, despite having acknowledged that she was in arrears on her 2015 taxes.
In a statement Thursday afternoon Tatum said said it recently came to her “attention that there was an inadvertent non payment of my municipal taxes of approximately $6700 for 2015.”
Over the phone she clarified it was RMWB administration who brought the error to her attention. She said she worked to quickly pay the amount, inform her colleagues, and look to inform the public in the interest of transparency.
She said the error was “an administrative oversight.”
“It was not malicious or intentional, it wasn’t something that, you know, I sought out to not pay my taxes, so, of course, when I found out about it I was quite upset and tried to rectify the situation as best I could as soon as I could,” she said.
Tatum said in the release in order to be as transparent as possible she brought it to the attention of her council colleagues. Sources to MyMcMurray said Mayor Melissa Blake and administration have known about the arrears since March 1.
“I understand that under the municipal government act, a councillor must resign in the circumstances, or a council can bring a court application. Council does not have authority to remove a council member,” Tatum wrote in her statement. “At this point I don’t think it’s in the public’s best interest for me to resign.”
Tatum said there have been similar situations in Red Deer where council chose not to make a court application and instead imposed a sanction on the member.
“Not to belittle the issue, but I think in the broad scheme of things it was an inadvertent mistake, and I’m sorry that it happened, but I feel like it would be not right for me to resign for the taxpayers to go through a by-election or whatever process that would be over something that was an inadvertent mistake,” she said by phone.
“But, it’s public, that’s their decision, for council to do whatever they want to do with that then I respect that and we’ll just move on through it,” she said.
Being in arrears of more than $50 means a councillor is ineligible to serve under the Local Authorities Act, which means they are disqualified from office under the Municipal Government Act, which ultimately means the councillor is legally required to resign.
The Local Election Authorities Act section 22(1)(c)(d) states, “a person is not eligible to be nominated as a candidate in any election under this Act if on nomination day …. the person is indebted to the municipality of which the
person is an elector for taxes in default exceeding $50 … or the person is indebted to the local jurisdiction for which the election is to be held for any debt exceeding $500 and in default for more than 90 days.”
The Municipal Government Act section 174(1)(b) states that, “a councillor is disqualified from council if … the councillor ceases to be eligible for nomination as a candidate under the Local Authorities Election Act.”
“A councillor that is disqualified must resign immediately,” according to section 175(1) of the Municipal Government Act. If that councillor doesn’t resign the Act allows council to take that councillor to court for an order determining whether the person was never qualified to be or has ceased to be qualified to remain a councillor, or an order declaring the person to be disqualified from council.
Tatum was elected to council in the March 30, 2015 Ward 1 by-election with just shy of 32 per cent of the votes.
