Councillors bounced off Enmax board in exchange for quarterly updates

Two members of Calgary City Council no longer have seats on the board of directors at the publicly owned Enmax.

The utility has announced that the current council representatives, Coun. Peter Demong and Coun. Shane Keating, are no longer part ofthe board.

The move, announced last week, was approvedby both city council and Enmax's board.

In exchange for giving up the two seats, the number of annual meetings between the board and council will be increasing from twice a year to quarterly.

Board chairperson Greg Melchin said the lack of council representation is not that unusual for aboard of a city-owned company.

"It's very standard practice," Melchin said. "Other utilities have done this. Epcor(Power LP in Edmonton), for example, has done this forever."

The reason for the change was because politicians cannot talk about discussions in the boardroom, not even with their council colleagues, he said.

Not having them on the Enmax board eliminates the possibility of conflicts of interest.

"It's separating the responsibilities of a shareholder from the duties of a board," Melchin said.

City council approved the change

Mayor Naheed Nenshi sees no problems in the decision, adding that he believe nothing should be read into it.

"It's been a long-running debate on whether the councillors are adding value to this kind of a board," Nenshi said.

"The real value that the councillors add is they bring a political filter," the mayor said. "Frankly, they bring a normal person filter of, 'This is how it will impact the ratepayers. This is how your decisions impact regular people.'"

Rather than regularly involving two council members in Enmax matters, the mayor said the board will now meet with all of council every three months.

Ex-board member doesn't agree

A former city councillor who spent seven years on the Enmax board doesn't agree with the decision.

Brian Pincott said it's a good idea for councillors to be in that boardroom.

He said one of the advantages to having a publicly owned utility is that it can execute on city priorities and strategies.

For example, Enmax runs a district energy centre to provide heat to buildings in the East Village and it provides electricity generated by wind turbines and solar panels. That ties into city goals on sustainability.

"The councillor can say, 'Look, this is not aligning with any of the goals of the shareholder so we need to reel it back, understand how it all works' and that certainly happened while I was there," Pincott said.

"And it was considered to be valuable input."

Council members still on other boards

The decision to stop having council representation on the Enmax board sets the utility apart from other city-owned agencies and subsidiaries.

Council members are part of the boards of Calgary Parking Authority,Calgary Municipal Land Corporation and Calgary Economic Development.

Unlike other members of the Enmax board, councillors receivedno financial compensation for their board work at the city-owned utility.