Shelburne Council provides support for final Widbur Memorial Tournament

Written By PETER RICHARDSON

Council heard a presentation from Al Widbur, concerning the 12th Annual Jennifer Widbur Memorial Tournament on Monday evening. 

This hockey event is held to honour Al's late daughter and raise money for the Headwaters Hospital Cancer Care. Jennifer, who lost her battle with breast cancer at age 40, has been celebrated and remembered by this tournament for the past 11 years and this year, will mark the last year for the tournament, due to a lack of manpower to keep it going. 

Al requested that Shelburne Council donate money to purchase ice time for the event. He noted that in all previous years Council had not seen fit to participate. Council accepted the presentation and a motion was passed to allocate $350 from the Community Grant Fund to purchase two hours of ice time.

New parental leave policy

Following this, the Clerk presented two reports concerning the adoption, by the Town of a new Council Member Pregnancy and Parental Leave Policy, as well as a Council Staff Relationship Policy. 

The former was required to allow Councillors to take such absences, without requiring a motion from Council and to still be paid and have their appropriate Council business essences still paid for. As Councillors are not employees of the Town, they are not eligible for EI or other Town benefits during pregnancy or parental leave. 

The second report concerns the working relationship between Staff and Council and laid out how it should be conducted. Both reports were accepted by Council and will be enacted.

Clean Water Agency summary report

Jim Moss, Director of Development and Operations reported on the Towns annual Ontario Clean Water Agency Water Summary Report for 2018. 

He noted that the Town had received a 100 percentile evaluation and was in total compliance with all regulations. However, the inspector had suggested three recommendations, one that additional LogBook training be implemented to improve documentation of departures from normal operating conditions and equipment that ceased to operate. Two, that additional sampling and testing be done, as sampling is currently at it's monthly limits and three, that arsenic sampling be continued monthly, in the distribution system, until a treatment system is installed at Well #3.

Sikh flag raising

In other business, the request for a Sikh Flag to be raised in celebration of Sikh Heritage Month, in April was debated, with concerns being raised as to how long, such flags, should be flown. 

The reason being, that if several of these requests were to fall in the same time frame, there had to be enough time to accommodate them all. Deputy Mayor Steve Anderson suggested that as these were in general a ceremonial gesture, that perhaps a single day would suffice, or perhaps a couple of days. 

It was decided that pending a Staff proposal or policy, the Sikh flag would be raised at 10:00 a.m. on April 1 and flown for one week.