Coun. Diane Colley-Urquhart defends missing council meetings due to 'partial expedition' to Antarctica

Coun. Diane Colley-Urquhart is defending her decision to book a $25,000 Antarctic cruise that would take her away from several important city council meetings, saying it was a once-in-a-lifetime trip that can only be done at a certain time of the year.

"You can't really get into the Antarctic in August," she told reporters Monday, after returning early from her voyage due to an engine failure on the ship.

Colley-Urquhart said she left Calgary on Nov. 13 and had initially planned to return Dec. 3 but the trip was cut short due to the ship's mechanical problems.

The veteran Ward 13 councillor surprised her colleagues by showing up Monday forthe first day of the city's budget deliberations after telling them earlier this month shewould be away.

During the meeting's lunch break, Colley-Urquhart told reporters she had weighed her personal desire to visit Antarctica against her duties as a city councillor and decided it would be OK to miss several meetings in November in order to make the trip.

"This is something I've wanted to do for a long, long time and saved up a for a long, long time to do it thank goodness they're reimbursing everything," she said.

As Monday's budget deliberations began,Colley-Urquhartplaced a small, toy penguin on her desk at the council table.

She also told her colleagues she learned more about climate change during her "partial expedition" to Antarctica.

Mayor 'pleasantly surprised'

MayorNaheedNenshisaid he was "pleasantly surprised" to seeColley-Urquhartat the budget meeting.

He notedshe had "volunteered to step up" as the deputy mayor in the month of August, when council doesn't meet but there can still be duties required of the mayor or deputy mayor.

"People who do that, who step up for August, often will take their vacation at a different time of year,"the mayorsaid.

"That said, I am not familiar with anyone ever missing budget before, so I am pleased that she's back."

Colley-Urquhart, however, noted two other councillorsdid miss some of the budget deliberations in 2014.

Couns. Jim Stevenson and Joe Magliocca missed the latter part of multi-day budget meetings that year as they travelled to Vancouver to attend Grey Cup events as representatives of the city, leading up to the CFL championship game that the Calgary Stampeders won.

Other meetings missed

After winning re-election in October's municipal election, Colley-Urquhart failed to attend a series of meetings in November and hadn't publicly explained her absence until Monday.

"We're not even quite sure when she left," Peter McCaffery, director of research at the Manning Foundation, which tracks council attendance, told The Calgary Eyeopener last week.

He said Colley-Urquhartattended the council meeting on Nov. 6 but then went absent after that.

"Since then, she's missed the regular meeting on the 13th, the strategic meeting on the 16th and the combined meeting on the 20th," McCaffery told the Calgary Eyeopener last week.

"It certainly would be unusual to be going away straight after an election like this," he added."The first couple of months after an election are usually the most important time in the council calendar."

'Regret' over missing motion

Along withCoun.JeromyFarkas, Colley-Urquharthad co-sponsored a motion at the Nov. 13 council meeting to suspend work on the Southwest BRT (bus rapid transit) project, but she wasn't there to debate or vote on the motion when it came up.

The motion was soundly defeated, and a frustrated Farkaslater said he didn't know whereColley-Urquhartwas or why she was absent.

"I guess you could say I got thrown under the bus," he said at the time.

But Colley-Urquhart offered a different assessment Monday, saying she and Farkas had agreed not to pursue a notice of motion because she had initially, at least convinced him to go another route and use an "administrative inquiry" to address the BRT issue.

That option would involve simply asking city staff for a status report on the project and wouldn't have required a vote on the floor of council.

"Then I found out on Monday morning [Nov. 13] that Coun. Farkas had decided to go the notice-of-motion route and had a whole media strategy tied into it," she said.

"So, to support him, I let my name be used, to stand with the notice of motion, which I regret."

Colley-Urquhart said that, out of a sense of caution, she even recorded the phone call she had with Farkas on Nov. 2 in which they agreed not to pursue a notice of motion on the BRTissue.

"I was very concerned about how this was going to be handled," she said.

Farkasdeclinedto respond directly to Colley-Urquhart's comments Monday, sayinghe doesn't want to get into a "he said, she said" dispute.