NIPAWIN — The Town of Nipawin has edited a fire department policy that previously prevented a firefighter from running for council.
The policy used to say a council member cannot serve on the fire department and a fire department member cannot run for council. This changed at council on March 11.
“That has now been removed from the policy, so now, in effect, someone can serve in both,” said Barry Elliott, the town’s administrator.
Elliott said the primary reason why he believes the policy was previously in place was to prevent a conflict of interest.
“Frankly, since the time the previous policy was developed there have been a number of improvements to legislation and definition of roles that now make this particular clause somewhat unnecessary,” he said. “In the last few years the province of Saskatchewan has done a tremendous amount of work in strengthening the council conflict of interest guidelines and legislation within the Municipalities Act.”
With this edit, council also made it more clear in the policy that firefighters in the town are considered volunteers.
“Now the town has determined the firefighters are indeed volunteer firefighters and not employees of the municipality. That really paved the way in looking at removing this particular clause,” Elliott said. “They are indeed volunteers so this council has recognized that they’re classified as volunteers – and incredibly valuable volunteers in that regard.”
This isn’t the first time this clause has been questioned and brought up by council.
“The discussion about removing that clause began back in the spring of 2017 with this council,” Elliott said. “There was a partial adjustment made but it was not completed and as a result it sat there.”
He said when Stacey Vik wanted to run for council it highlighted that this policy had not yet been changed.
“I think that brought to the forefront that we had not yet corrected that.”
Elliott said that this delay was entirely an administrative delay, not a council or elected official delay.
“Every community struggles – smaller communities anyway – with getting people interested in serving on council and likewise people interested in serving on the fire department. Certainly there is a recognition that we want to make sure there are as few hurdles to accommodate interested individuals in both of those roles.”
