The Village of Halkirk held what should be its final council meeting with appointed administrator Ian McCormack running things on Nov. 15.
Halkirk will go to the poll on Nov. 21 to elect a new council after all three councillors resigned earlier this year.
Running for election are Yvette Allen, Dennis Cordel, Ross Elsasser, Jan Koenraadt, and John Myles Gregory.
Chief administrative officer Tamara Sloboda will serve as the returning officer, and during the Nov. 15 council meeting, John Beaudoin was appointed as deputy returning officer.
The voting hours for the election will run from 10 a.m. until 8 p.m.
Other items on the Nov. 15 agenda included a discussion of petitions and resident requests which had been submitted at the conclusion of the September meeting.
McCormack noted that due to the nature of all three documents, all three were being addressed as petitions and that as petitions all were deficient.
The petition related to animal control was found to be a matter not eligible for a petition, nor was the bylaw officer or a document requesting the immediate resignation of the chief administrative officer (CAO).
A resident in the meeting noted that the document pertaining to the CAO wasn’t a petition, but a demand.
“Under the (Municipal Government Act) it was being treated as a petition,” said McCormack.
According to McCormack, the CAO is responsible to the sitting council, which has the final authority on who to appoint. He noted that the new council, once elected, could take all the documents under advisement as there was a significant number of signatures on them, even if they didn’t meet the test of being a legal petition.
Additionally, once the meeting concluded, McCormack told those in attendance where to locate information on the Government of Alberta website so that in the future petitions could be done properly.
Under the financial section of the meeting, McCormack authorized a donation of $2,500 towards the funeral expenses of long-time councillor and former mayor Dale Kent, who had passed away a few weeks prior.
Sloboda noted that the funds were being reallocated from council conference funds which were not used when the previous council stepped down.
Prior to the conclusion of the meeting, a date of Dec. 5 was set for the new council to be sworn in and to hold an organizational meeting.