Richard Gleeson
Northern News Services

NNSL (Jul 15/98) - Mayor Dave Lovell's political career was set to be challenged like never before, but an impassioned plea from a former city councillor stopped the challenge before it started.

"I don't think Mayor Lovell should resign," Trevor Kasteel told council and the near-capacity crowd that gathered at City Hall Monday night. "His interests in this community are exactly the same as Ald. Ramsay's, the damn same."

Dave Ramsay has been one of Lovell's biggest critics over the last two months. Ramsay brought to public attention the Dairy Queen servicing deal and the fact that the last council had obtained a legal opinion on secret meetings.

Kasteel acknowledged that more than half of those gathered for the meeting wanted Lovell to resign.

When Kasteel went on to praise the work of former senior administrator Doug Lagore, observers emitted a round of chuckles.

"That's the cynicism I'm talking about, the laughs behind me," said Kasteel. "I'm not saying he was a saint, I'm not saying that at all."

But the threat to Lovell's mayoral position did not come exclusively from the public.

A number of councillors were dissatisfied with Lovell's explanation of the botched Dairy Queen servicing deal, in which the city agreed to pay for servicing a lot to be developed by Yellowknife South MLA Seamus Henry. The mayor said it was a mistake, something that "slipped through the cracks."

Following Monday afternoon's committee of the whole meeting in which the deal was discussed, one councillor said she was considering resigning that evening if Lovell did not.

For his part, Lovell said he had no intention of resigning over the servicing deal or his failure to inform council of a legal opinion the city had obtained on secret meetings.

"If there was a long line of (similar incidents) either I should be firing people in administration or getting out myself," said Lovell Tuesday.

The mayor said Ramsay made "a mountain out of a molehill," with his treatment of the legal opinion and insisted the servicing deal was something that would never happen again.

Neither incident, he said, called into question his commitment to the city.

For his part, Ramsay said pressure for Lovell's resignation is far from spent.

"I think what's going to happen is we're going to see a push by the public," said Ramsay. "If they want me to, I'd be willing to steer it."

Monday night, Yellowknife Property Owners Association president Matthew Grogono said he had suggested in a private meeting that the mayor should "do the right thing."

"The biggest impediment we're facing right now is a lack of confidence in leadership," said Grogono.

Ratepayer David Legros agreed, saying, "It's time to put in a recall act in for mayor and council.... I think the mayor should do the honorable thing, and I think he knows what that is."

Legros added that over the last two months council has spent more time asking lawyers for advice than it has consulting the people it was elected to serve.