Councillors press for public input in review of City of Yellowknife's wildfire response

Yellowknife city councillors say that an assessment of its response to the wildfires and evacuation should put more attention on transparency to the public.

In the city's first governance and priority meeting since lifting the capital's evacuation order, city manager Sheila Bassi-Kellett presented amemo to council Monday to tender a contractto conduct an "after action assessment" on the North Slave complex wildfires. That work would look at what was expected to happen, what actually happened, what went well and why and what can be improved upon.

Councillors supported the assessment but said that consulting with residents and providing the public with more information, is paramount.

Coun.Rob Warburton saidthe public has "very clearly repeated" that it wants more information.

The city released its "evacuation framework" in July, meant as a high level overview, but Warburton said he heard that constituents wanted more details.

And many left before the government announced the evacuation order.

"People left because they didn't feel safe and like they could trust what we were giving them," Warburtonsaid.

"We said framework over and over again and it wasn't good enough. If the public says it's not good enough, it's not good enough.

Coun.Tom McLennan pointed to the city's plan for managing a prolonged winter power outage and noted that it lists details about warming centres, where equipment can be found and who would be called on to assist with communications and transportation.

"It certainly provides a lot more specific information than our evacuation framework does," he said.

Bassi-Kellett said that's because in the case of a winter power outage, administration knows what the ramifications are. For an evacuation, so much dependson context.

Whether it's high water, fire, where the threat is coming from, she said all these factors play into why there is less detail in the city's evacuation framework.

McLennan suggests detailing which businesses are deemed essential, what secondary roles city staff could redeploy to and what locations could house firefighters or other response personnel.

He said he understands the need to be able to adapt to changing scenarios but that it makes sense to have a plan for the clearest, highest risks.

"I truly think there's more information we can put out on this and we can have a more structured plan for the things within our control, I think that's what the public was crying for leading up to this," hesaid.

Broad list of stakeholders

Councillor Cat McGurk further expressed her support that the review be public and asked for assurance that the contractors' work capture a full scope of experiences.

"What happened here in city hall, what happened on the ground, in contractors' offices, I don't want that to be lost," she said.

Bassi-Kellett said that the list of stakeholders involved in the review will include volunteers, private industry, essential workers and the public.

"The list of stakeholders will be fulsome," she said.

Bassi-Kellett said it's too soon to know the assessment's cost but that it will likely be within the range of $100,000 to$150,000.

She said that in an ideal scenario, administration would award the contract by December and look to have the assessment completed by June 2024.

Based on councils' suggestions, city administration will tweak its proposal to include a public input component and to add an interim report councillors say that will help keep them, and the public informed throughout the process.

Administration will then bring its proposal back to council on Oct. 10.

Depending on its discussion then, councilexpects it will then put the proposal to a vote.