The Grande Yellowhead Regional Division is short one board trustee after deciding to remove one of its own in an unexpected development at last week’s regular board meeting.

Hinton Trustee Cheryl Howell was disqualified from the board due to an apparent conflict of interest surrounding the Retirement Incentive Plan (RIP), which had been discussed and voted on during the December board meeting.

“The conflict arose from Trustee Howell’s participation in the discussion and vote on the Retirement Incentive Plan. The result is that the integrity of the board may be challenged and the board may find itself in a serious and vulnerable position for any future decisions made as a board,” said Jasper Trustee Gilbert Wall, who made the motion for Howell’s removal, in a GYRD release. Howell spoke to the motion involving her dismissal before it came to a vote, but her comments will not be made public until early next month.

The motion had not appeared on the prepared agenda for the January meeting and was introduced as soon as the board moved into the public portion of its monthly activities. The action was based on the potential that Howell was involved in a conflict of pecuniary, or financial, interest.

The GYRD declined to comment further on the nature of this possible conflict.

“We just don’t want to give out information that could put us in a difficult situation later,” said division spokesperson Nicole Merrifield.

According to the Alberta School Act, trustees must formally declare a conflict of interest in any situation where the board is discussing or voting on a topic that may involve a pecuniary interest. Once that declaration is made the trustee must leave the board meeting while the discussion and vote are taking place, according to the GYRD release.

The minutes of the December, 2005, meeting reveal that Howell first voted in favour of approving the RIP for 2005-2006 and later participated in a vote and discussion on a related motion to offer the plan to only 20 qualified teachers. At the time, Wall inquired about the potential of there being a conflict of interest in Howell’s case, but she informed the board that she could be involved in the vote.

The RIP is a strategy intended to reduce the division’s per teacher costs, as a significant number of the educators in the region are at the maximum point on the salary grid. 

Howell’s short biography still found on the GYRD website mentions the fact that the former trustee is a teacher “involved in local and provincial organizations,”  having  worked as a substitute teacher for the GYRD and the Living Waters Catholic School Division. Previous to moving north, Howell had served as the mayor of Longview, Alberta. 

Further, Howell’s husband is employed by the GYRD but has no plans to retire in the next two years, according to a statement made by Howell after the meeting concluded.

Howell said that it was  “ludicrous” that all future decisions of the board would somehow be affected if she continued to serve. “I am left wondering what the real agenda behind this decision is,” she said. “And I wonder how the voters in Hinton, who democratically elected me to serve as a trustee, will feel knowing that this board has decided to deprive them of their voice.”

The GYRD has no immediate plans to fill the Hinton vacancy created by Howell’s ousting. The town is also represented by Shirley Caputo and Howell also has a period of up to thirty days in which to appeal the decision, according to the terms of the School Act.

“I do not intend to lightly step away from the trust and responsibility that the voters placed with me,” she said. “Now I need to consider all my options.”

Howell is also frustrated that the board did not consider an option provided for in the School Act that would have brought the matter before the Court of Queen’s Bench to determine if there had in fact been a conflict of interest situation. 

This is the GYRD’s first removal of a board member due to a conflict of interest in living memory.

“No one can recall it ever happening before in the GYRD and there are people here who have been working for more than twenty years,” said Merrifield. “It has happened in Alberta and when you follow something as cut and dried as the School Act, these situations do arise.”