Response CO. i N C

A number of ‘allegations have been made concerning ny
involvement in the investigation of soods missing from City
Hall which culminated in a seareh of the. premises of
Messrs. Lee and Melnechenko, two former City employees. L
wish to respond to these. allejuations in order to lay to rest
any suspicions of abuse of office.

It was alleged in the Herald, May 10th, 1981, that the

goods in question were not in. fact missing from City Hall.

In fact when it. was reported to me that goods were missing,

my first act was to verify through the Purchasing Agent, by

means of invoices, that these items had been received at

City Hall but could not be accounted for. A thorough search —
,revealed that these items were indeed missing.

Mr. Rankin suggests in his commentary of May 12th, 1981,
that I was either involved in a hatchet job or too blind to
see a vendetta brewing in my own office. Both of these
assertions are false. in fact, the decision to inform the
police of the missing items was not made by Mr. Peters, the
alleged author of the vendetta; but by Mr. Pollock, the City
Administrator, in consultation with Mr. Peters and myself.

This decision was made prior to any suggestion of any
particular suspect and entirely on the basis of our duty to
the taxpayers to see thav where items are missing, a sericus
attempt ais made. at PQcovery . Ve felt that if such
occurrences were not made the subject of orficial
investigation, the City would face truly serious problems of
inventory control. Mr. Peters did not inform the police. on
his own initiative, or without our knowledge, but at the
express direction of Mr. Pollock.

It was suggested in an article by Mr..Rankin in The Herald on
May 12, 1981 that Mr. Peters was somehow responsible for
"launching a full scale raid'. This too was incorrect.
Mr. Peters observed one of the missing items in the office
of Messrs. Lee and Melnechenko and informed the police of
this. observation. At this point, the investigating officer
duly applied for and obtained search warrants and conducted
the search. The decision to undertake the search was made
independently by the R.C.M.P. Whey were in no Way pressured
or instructed by myself or any public officials in this
connection.

It has been alleged that in some mysterious fashion the
actions taken in connection with the missing yoods are
related to the complaints of Messrs. Lee and Melnechenico
about lack of progress of City Hall in processing their
business. This too is incorrect. Their complaints surfaces
only after the missing dtems were reported to the police.
In the matter of their complaints, I investigated and