By Mark Squibb/November 18, 2022
The Town of Witless Bay has fired town manager Shawn Kavanagh not once, not twice, but three times in as many weeks, but the Calvert lawyer says he doesn’t believe he’s actually been dismissed, claiming council did not meet the proper provincial requirements laid out for firing town managers.
The latest firing happened Friday night, November 11 on the Remembrance Day holiday, making Witless Bay council perhaps the only municipality in Canada to ever hold a council meeting at that hour or day. On close to last minute notice, council cancelled a scheduled meeting the day before and moved it to 7 p.m. Friday night.
The latest Kavanagh firing began with councillor Ralph Carey making a motion to rescind his motion of October 25 which had been to dismiss Kavanagh, without cause, as of June 9 this past summer, with pay in lieu of a notice. At that time, Mayor Trevor Croft, Deputy Mayor Lorna Yard, and councillor Gerard Dunne voted to approve Carey’s motion. Councillor Nancy Burke, who had just returned from a long leave of absence, voted against the motion, saying there was no written record for her to review. Councillors Jacob Hayden and Alex Troake were absent.
“Just holding that motion was contrary to legislation,” said Kavanagh. “Council, by voting on that motion, was acting outside of the Municipalities Act. Councillor Carey, who I believe raised the motion, and proposed it, referenced Section 68 of the Municipalities Act, and Section 68 of the Municipalities Act quite clearly states, and I’m reading verbatim, ‘A meeting of councillors may not hold a vote on a motion to dismiss under subsection (b) unless a copy of the notice addressed to the person who is the subject of the motion is served on him or her personally.’ I got nothing about that motion, like I was supposed to. I found out the day before the meeting. Someone messaged me and told me they were going to fire me. So, that motion in October should not have even been legally held. And then they went ahead with the vote, and the motion failed, because they didn’t get the required number of votes. Section 68. (1) says that a town manager may be dismissed by a vote of 2/3 of the councillors in office. And in October, they did not get 2/3 of the councillors in office to support the motion.”
Nevertheless, the motion passed.
During the November 11 meeting, Carey rescinded his previous motion, and put forward a new motion that was identical in all ways but one. This time the termination date was cited as effective July 12, and not June 9.
There was no mention of why the former motion was being rescinded and voted on again.
Council passed the new motion 5-1, with Burke again voting nay, and Troake being absent.
Then Carey reviewed the matter and realized the error regarding the date.
With that, he moved to rescind the motion approved just a few moments earlier, and council voted for the third time to fire Kavanagh. Burke once again voted against it.
Acting Town Manager Geraldine Caul later explained to council she had made a mistake and put the wrong date on the original motion to terminate Kavanagh.
But Kavanagh says there was more wrong than that.
“As far as the second meeting, that meeting was also against the law, because, once again I was not provided any notice that the motion was going to be spoken about,” said Kavanagh. “So, at that time, I wrote to the Acting Town Manger, making my objections known, and asking that those objections be forwarded to council. And I asked for a confirmation that this would be raised with council, and I haven’t received anything back, I haven’t heard anything back. After the meeting Friday night, I e-mailed Geraldine again and asked for an update. So far, I’ve gotten nothing. It’s getting to the point now where I’m not even sure what’s going on. That’s two months in a row councillors have unlawfully raised my contract termination at a meeting. So, how many more times is it going to happen?”
He said the last correspondence from the office was in September, when Town staff told him the process was still unfolding and that he would hear more eventually.
“But nobody’s told me anything,” said Kavanagh. “I haven’t even been told yet why I’ve been let go.”
He said that he still does not know whether council has been made aware of his concerns.
“I haven’t received that confirmation, so I’m not aware if council is fully apprised of what they’re voting on, and whether the people voting on the motion are aware that the motion shouldn’t even have been brought forward,” said Kavanagh.
“According to the Town’s website, I’m still an employee,” he joked. “And the legislation is quite clear. Until they follow Section 68, which is not a difficult piece of legislation, it’s only a couple of lines, but unless they follow Section 68, I’m still employed by the Town of Witless Bay.”
Kavanagh said he has reached out to Municipal Affairs, which deemed the matter an HR issue, but did reiterate the two-thirds’ vote rule.
The Town hired Kavanagh in February 2021, after Kevin Kelley, whom the town had hired in September 2020, resigned a month later. There had also been changes in the position before that.
“March was the deadline week for paying taxes, so here I was, my fist week on the job, with a severely understaffed office,” said Kavanagh. “The month of March was extremely busy, between people calling in payments for taxes, and people wanting explanations for their tax bills, and coming in to pay their taxes… It was hectic, and that’s just the day-to-day stuff. And the bigger stuff, like all these capital works projects that are planned, that all gets taken care of when the other stuff gets taken care of. And that doesn’t even cover the meetings, which I wasn’t getting paid for… So, I was putting in longer hours as a town manager than I was ever putting in as a lawyer.”
Mayor Trevor Croft, when asked if he had a moment to discuss Kavanagh’s concerns, delegated the question to Caul, as he was on the west coast.
Nobody at the Town Hall answered the phone when The Irish Loop Post called this week, but in response to an e-mail Caul replied, “The Town Office does not discuss matters pertaining to Human Resources.”
