While county support for this year’ s Lac La Biche Pow Wow Days and Fish Derby still remains up in the air, a final decision may be coming soon.
While county support for this year’ s Lac La Biche Pow Wow Days and Fish Derby still remains up in the air, a final decision may be coming soon.
The county’ s financial support - or lack thereof - of the area’ s premier summer event was discussed during today’ s Lac La Biche County council meeting. County Mayor Omer Moghrabi began the discussion by expressing his concerns over the general dividedness of the Pow Wow Days Association’ s members and the fact time for planning is running out.
“We’ re in May now and so I’ m not sure businesses will step forward to sponsor this,” said Moghrabi about the event set to take place over the first weekend of August. “The organization has become dysfunctional, it’ s clear it is divided into two groups.”
Moghrabi said he was looking to council for direction on the issue, but said he could suggest it if needed. Councillor Hajar Haymour spoke up first, saying the running of the event was the decision of the Pow Wow Association not county council, but Moghrabi clarified he was talking only about county support for the event.
“If support from the county is withdrawn, basically that means our grounds, our in-kind support and financial support,” he said. “We can’ t tell them to shut down but we can withdraw our support.”
Moghrabi said that particular issues with the running of the organization were its bylaws, which he feels should be rewritten for clarifications, including regarding conflicts of interest.
But it was the impending results of an audit of the organization’ s financial statement that influenced council’ s final decision.
According to the county’ s assistant CAO and senior manager of finance and grants Dan Small, the long-awaited results of the audit should be in within the week.
“The auditor was here last week and she said she will get it to us soon,” he said. “I speculate sometime this week.”
Council agreed deciding whether or not to support the event could wait until the review of the organization’ s financial statement was returned. The county ordered the audit in February as a stipulation of whether or not they would allocate funding to this year’ s Pow Wow.
“I’ m listening to Mr. Small and he said the audit will be ready in two or three days, let’ s wait to see that,” said Haymour. “That will help us make our decision.”
Haymour suggested council defer the decision until next Tuesday’ s council meeting, something the rest of council was on board with.
“That make sense to wait if it’ s going to be pretty quick,” said Councillor Wanda Austin.
Councillors Robert Richard and Richard Olson agreed that waiting for the results of the audit was reasonable if it would be within the week. A motion made by Olson to defer discussion on Pow Wow Days until an audited report is provided to council and county administration at the next council meeting was carried unanimously.
