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A look at decisions made by Whitehorse city council at its March 8 meeting

Council moves ahead with custodial contact
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Whitehorse City Hall (Joel Krahn/Yukon News file)

Council moves ahead with custodial contact

The City of Whitehorse will soon begin looking for the next custodians to manage the cleaning of seven city buildings.

At Whitehorse city council’s March 8 meeting, members voted in favour of authorizing administration to begin the procurement process for the three-year contract for custodial services.

Under the city’s procurement policy, council must approve the commencement of procurement on any contracts expected to be worth more than $500,000, as this one is.

“The proposed procurement’s objectives are to provide a clean and pleasant working environment for city administration, protecting the capital investment made in the city’s buildings by ongoing cleaning and maintenance, and showing leadership in waste reduction with waste sorting and diversion,” city operations manager Richard Graham stated an earlier report to council.

With the procurement now approved to go forward, it’s expected the tender for the contract will be released March 15 with the contract to be awarded April 12. The new contract would take effect May 1.

Write-off bylaw amended

The City of Whitehorse’ recently-adopted write-off bylaw has formally been amended with Whitehorse city council passing third reading of the change at its March 8 meeting.

The original bylaw formalized the write off of $294,345 the city was owed in outstanding fees and fines.

The amendment, however, reflected Telus’ payment of $1,950 on an account it was listed on for advertising that had been booked by a third party advertising agency.

Telus stated it only learned of the outstanding amount after the list of accounts owing was published.

Once it learned about it, Telus officials reached out to the city and paid off the account as an act of goodwill.

The account was from an invoice for arena ice advertising that was sent to Telus late instead of to the advertising agency that entered into an agreement with the city for the ad space.

The agency has since gone out of business, but Telus opted to pay off the amount.

As Brittany Dixon, the city’s manager of financial services, told council on Feb. 15, the payment was not received in time for the bylaw naming Telus to be changed prior to third reading. Thus, the amendment to the bylaw was required.

“As the item is no longer outstanding and payment was actually received prior to the passage of the write-off bylaw, the bylaw needs to be amended,” she said.

With council’s March 8 vote, the amount is no longer listed on the bylaw.



Stephanie Waddell

About the Author: Stephanie Waddell

I joined Black Press in 2019 as a reporter for the Yukon News, becoming editor in February 2023.
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