The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
Jonathon Naylor Editor City council is 'comfortable' with the effectiveness of a policy designed to stop municipal workers from using city trucks for personal reasons. That's the word from Mayor George Fontaine following questions of whether Flin Flon taxpayers are unnecessarily funding the transportation of employees. 'I don't think there's an actual written policy, but we have kind of a usage policy that we adhere to,' he said at last week's council meeting. 'So I think we're fairly comfortable with it.' Mayor Fontaine was responding to comments from taxpayer advocate Blair Sapergia, who appeared before council to ask whether such a policy existed. Without naming names, Sapergia said it 'seems like there are a few people' using city vehicles as 'personal vehicles.' That brought an explanation from Coun. Bill Hanson. 'The majority of the time, if you see somebody that you think is using it for personal use, they're probably on call, for one thing, and can't leave that vehicle,' he said. '...that's about the only time I think you would see (that).' But Sapergia countered that 'it seems like there's four or five people that drive a vehicle full-time' and asked 'are they all on call, always?' On call He said he understands that workers who are on call would be driving a city vehicle. 'But I mean, you look at the city's emergency number, there's one guy on call,' Sapergia said. 'And I phoned it a couple of times and both times the same guy answered it. I'm sure that was a fluke.' Mayor Fontaine said he and council reviewed the concerns outlined by Sapergia 'early in our mandate because the question came up.' 'We did go through a fairly exhaustive questioning of our people with respect to who had trucks, at what hours and how they were being used,' the mayor told Sapergia. 'We were very comfortable last time we looked at it and we asked those same questions because of the same feeling you have. We don't want to be spending money on people using them when they shouldn't be. But the reasons for having them at the time were sound, so that's what we're dealing with.'
