It was said on multiple occasions during Special Open Council Meeting No. 14 held on May 16 that mayor Ron Paull personally intervened with working contractors so as to stop them from removing the historic steam shovel from Lhtako Dene Park, as they had been hired to do.
Mayor Paull wishes to publicly establish that he did no such thing. He states:
I want to make it clear that I didn’t at any time ask, tell, or order the contractor to cease and desist. In fact, I did not even know we had a contractor until Sunday, May 21.
I believe that somebody had mistaken somebody else as me in telling the contractor to stop work. The ONLY time I spoke to the contractor was at about 8 p.m. Monday, May 22 when I went to the steam shovel to investigate a concern from a caller that someone was climbing around on the steam shovel.
I went down there to find that it was only the contractor, whom I know, and we had a very amicable conversation, with the caller parked right there and hearing every word of our conversation. In fact, the contractor was very intent on showing me in exhaustive detail how they were going about the move. I finally politely said that I had to get going and did just that.
Respectfully,
Ron Paull
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