FORT FRANCES — The town's mayor is pushing back on criticism of council decisions made to family members and town staff.
Fort Frances Mayor Andrew Hallikas started Monday’s council meeting, addressing reports of the public inappropriately criticizing council decisions to town staff and council family members.
Hallikas strongly stated that public feedback is “always welcome both positive and negative,” and he encourages the public to exercise their right to protest if they disagree with a council or administrative decisions. However, there are specific channels the public can use to protest council decisions, he said.
“If you are going to provide feedback to mayor and council or administration there is a process to do so. you can call us, you can write a letter, you can send an email or if you want to address council directly, you can come as a deputation and you book that through the clerk,” Hallikas said.
Hallikas stressed that people need to be aware that their criticisms are going to be heard if they follow the appropriate channels of communication.
"It serves no purpose to voice a disagreement or confront employees of the Town of Fort Frances who had nothing to do with the decision-making, and, are in fact, just going about their day doing their jobs. Especially, and I can’t stress this enough, it is never appropriate to confront family members of town employees,” Hallikas said.
Hallikas explains in an interview with NWOnewswatch that town employees perform various jobs. These employees may not be informed of a particular decision made by council especially, if that decision lies outside of their employment area.
The mayor’s statement comes after some members of the public voiced their displeasure regarding the temporary suspension of programming at the Fort Frances Sportsplex.
Hallikas said a reason for the suspension of programming was due to liability issues that arose during a recent policy review, where it become apparent that certain staff members were not certified in first aid and some were not qualified for some of the programming that they were instructing.
“We have a lot of young people and seniors over there, so we are very safety conscious, and especially in this day in age, very conscious of liability. Our insurance company, when they learn of this, said, “you really have to do something about that right away”,” said Hallikas.
Hallikas acknowledged that he understands patrons' concerns over the suspension of programming at the Fort Frances Sportsplex, saying he has regularly used the facility to maintain a healthy lifestyle.
However, he also acknowledges that the programming is on pause until the Sportsplex can certify those staff members and find qualified individuals to continue to offer a level of service that is both safe and accessible.
“Everyone is having trouble getting qualified employees to do various jobs, and that’s what we are running into here. We are having difficulty getting proper lifeguards to run all of our programs at the pool, so the ones that we have tend to get overused. The same thing with getting instructors. It’s difficult getting instructors that have qualifications,” Hallikas said.
Hallikas said the town is doing the best it can to get the Sportsplex back to a full schedule of programming.
