Jeanette Bancarz recalls coming face-to-face with the wrath of homeowners who lost everything in the Fort McMurray wildfire.
“This one woman stood up,” she remembered. “And she just really unleashed on me.”
Bancarz said she didn’t didn’t take the verbal assault personally, understanding that many people just “needed to vent.”
It was par for the course for her and eight other committee members when they signed up for the Wood Buffalo Recovery Committee.
The recovery committee, which will meet for the last time Wednesday night, was created by the Wood Buffalo municipal council to triage wildfire recovery priorities and propose fixes after Canada’s costliest insured disaster.
But given the scale of the May 2016 disaster, some committee members said Tuesday the committee served as a whipping board for exasperated residents. One member also said there’s still lots of work to be done.
‘We take a lot of flak’
Wood Buffalo councillor Keith McGrath remembered when he and the other committee members took heat for problems they did not create. McGrath is one of three municipal councillors who sit on the recovery committee.
“We take a lot of flak for some things we are not even responsible for,” McGrath said. “But you know what? As an elected official, you know that going in.”
But McGrath also noted the committee’s successes.
Among them were support for small businesses; money for social groups struggling after the wildfire; waiving portions of property taxes; cancelling tipping and permiting fees; hosting focus groups and securing pre-design funding for a second highway to serve as an evacuation route out of Fort McMurray.
“There’s so many things,” McGrath said.
‘Disappointed in myself’
Marty Giles is more blunt in his assessment of the recovery committee and, moreover, his performance on it.
Giles led the business recovery part of the committee and confessed it took too long for small businesses to receive loan money.
Chair of the Wood Buffalo Recovery Committee Jeanette Bancarz, left, with fellow committee member Marty Giles. (David Thurton/ CBC)
The municipality and the Canadian Red Cross had pioneered a financial support program for small businesses after the wildfire. However, many businesses complained it took too long to get funding and some said they were on the verge of closing down while waiting for the promised help.
“I am a little disappointed in myself,” Giles, a local businessman, said. “That’s my wheelhouse and I got that to the community late.”
That’s a wrap! The Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo’s recovery committee members reflect on their achievements and failures. (Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo )
Bancarz, a senior manager at ATB Bank, admitted it was “difficult” to watch while help took longer to arrive than she was used to in the private sector.
“That was the biggest challenge. You just want to say, ‘Why can’t we just do this?’ ” Bancarz said. “But this isn’t a criticism of municipalities. You have to follow the process so that you can ensure you have done your due diligence.”
Unfinished work
Giles said he’s “frustrated” the Wood Buffalo Recovery Committee has wrapped up early.
In April, Mayor Melissa Blake won enough votes to dissolve the committee four months before its anticipated October end date.
Blake had said the municipal council could quickly manage the recovery and no longer needed a sub-committee.
The Wood Buffalo council passed Mayor Melissa Blake’s motion to end the work of the recovery committee in April. (David Thurton/ CBC)
“Every decision or recommendation that comes from the committee has to be passed by council,” Blake said after the April council meeting. “And my optimism is that we will be able to move things that are so important to getting back people more quickly.”
Giles disagreed with the decision because he said there’s still so much work to do.
He pointed out that most residents are still not back in their homes and the community still needs to lobby the provincial government to follow through with the remaining funding needed to rebuild a second evacuation route out of Fort McMurray.
“I am worried that, as the committee folds, that [the recovery] won’t have the same political will given to it,” Giles said.
“Because I haven’t seen anybody yet — the mayor or council — really publicly just say that this highway has to happen.”
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