Photograph By Dave Eagles/KTW
The inside of the TNRD Building, headquarters of the Thompson-Nicola Regional District, which is located downtown at Victoria Street and Fifth Avenue. Photograph By Dave Eagles/KTW
Nandi Spolia (top right) and Sukh Gill (bottom right) have longtime membership ties to the Aurora Rotary Club and together organize the IndoCan Links Golf Tournament, an annual charity event. According to annual financial reports, the TNRD paid Nandi’s about $45,000 in 2018. Five years’ worth of purchases on Gill’s TNRD credit card show about $24,000 charged at the restaurant, most often on a Thursday or Friday night and including both TNRD staff and board directors.
Critics of animal shelter bill win with amendments
A bipartisan group of Colorado lawmakers has introduced a bill to stop the euthanasia of healthy, well-behaved dogs and cats in pet shelters.
and last updated 2021-05-04 08:07:41-04
FREMONT COUNTY â Two months after being introduced, the animal shelter bill HB21-1160 sounds much different than its original draft.
âI consider it a pretty good win for the opposition!â said Doug Rae, the Executive Director of Fremont County s Humane Society and a critic of the bill s original draft.
âThe language was incredibly vague and they only talked about saving healthy and safe animals⦠and that was a problem for me because thereâs another factor of animals called treatable animals, and they just need time to chill out and this bill was not going to save those animals, said Rae.
The review comes in the wake of a KTW investigation into spending at the TNRD from 2015 to January 2020 via the regional district-issued credit card of then-CAO Sukh Gill. Receipts from that time period show numerous charges for parties and to coffee shops, high-end restaurants, wineries, luxury hotels and liquor stores. Gill left the regional district suddenly in February 2020 with a $500,000-plus payout and a legal agreement mandating his exit be called a “retirement.” TNRD CAO Scott Hildebrand, who joined the TNRD last September, said during Thursday’s (March 11) board meeting that questions have been raised about whether some past transactions by the TNRD should have been incurred on the taxpayers’ dime and whether they were appropriate. He said his expectation as CAO is to continue to do business in a “cost-effective” and “fully transparent” way, with oversights and safeguards. He said the review process would be led by himself and legislative services dir
Reached by KTW, Talarico said he is in favour of a financial review or audit in principle, but thinks the optics of the board setting out terms of the review will render the results unacceptable to the public. He said the goal should be instilling confidence in the regional district. “The board should be as transparent as possible,” Talarico said. “We’ve used that term often in the last few weeks and, in my opinion, the only way to be totally transparent is to have an independent outside group put the criteria together, which they feel is important to the people in the regional district and oversee the review, not the regional district.”
TNRD board chair Ken Gillis said the board did not know the extent to which spending occurred and called the amounts “surprising” and “somewhat distressing.” “We have to do better, we will do better,” TNRD chair Ken Gillis said during a digital press conference on Monday. The press conference followed
an investigation by KTW into spending at the regional district, which detailed more than a half-million dollars charged in five years to former TNRD CAO Sukh Gill’s taxpayer-funded credit card. The expenses included big parties, high-end restaurants, regular coffee shop visits, luxury hotels and expensive gifts. Gillis took issue with classifying some TNRD events as “parties,” but admitted wine flowed freely at times. In addition, expensive tabs were uncovered amidst the expenses for Union of BC Municipalities convention events held by the regional district for networking purposes.