And the King has decreed....

At the regular Council meeting on July 13th, the business of the township was conducted in its usual manner until it got to one item on the agenda. The agenda item was the motion to select a newspaper to host “The Springwater Link” and other municipal information for the next year. A detailed report was attached confirming the responses to the RFP were complete. The township information, as most residents of Springwater know, for many years was published in the Springwater News. As an experiment it was transferred to the Barrie Advance since May of 2008. The motion tabled by Cowan chose Springwater News as the information link for the next year. It was a straight forward motion and should have been dealt with in a typical manner. However, the Springwater News is never dealt with in a fair and upright manner, mainly because of its open format that allows people like me to provide opinions and at times illustrate some of the shortcomings of our elected officials.
The mayor first suggested that it would be better to delay this vote as two people were absent, Deputy Mayor Hope and Councillor Caldwell. However there was no request from either asking for the vote to be delayed. Besides, the rules of order allow for members to be absent, which happens in the natural course of things. You simply need a quorum and one was present to conduct an official meeting. Ironically if you go back to March, when Councillor Cowan first tabled a notice of motion to move back to the Springwater News, Hope had an outburst, called Mr. Jacobs names and said if moving to the Springwater News was to be discussed, he would declare a conflict of interest which would be appropriate because of his public bias against both the Springwater News and Mr. Jacobs personally. Mr. Hope should once again declare this conflict at the next council meeting if the motion is tabled once again. To me the request to delay by the mayor was simply another ploy to unnecessarily delay a decision and show Mr. Jacobs who is in charge of the township business. The mayor had no problem spending thousands of dollars of tax payer money on other agenda items at the meeting with those same members absent.
Since Mr. Cowan then suggested which was confirmed by the clerk, that the motion on the floor needed to be dealt with, the mayor wanted to say and almost said that he was not prepared to deal with the matter at the meeting. Unfortunately for him council is a democracy and he has no veto power. After constantly badgering everyone for a way out, he was informed by the CAO that the motion could be deferred to the next meeting, if more information was required. Now remember, the report accompanying the motion suggested everything was complete. Councillor Clement inadvertently opened a door that gave the mayor a glimmer of hope to defer the motion. Clement at previous meetings had asked about the use of other mediums to get the township message out such as website, email etc. This in the larger scale of things is a reasonable question. However, this is unrelated to the motion at hand. Based on a request for unrelated information, the motion, even though procedurally incorrect, was deferred in an unusual manner. Typically motions are deferred to the next meeting. However the motion tabled and passed, stated that the motion must be heard with all members present. That is not a proper motion and illustrates another typical bullying tactic of our mayor. It could delay the decision for quite some time, as councillors are absent from time to time. I confronted the mayor at the meeting and suggested he was abusing his position and power as chair and directing the motion to a conclusion rather than simply directing the discussion like a good chair would do. As usual he dismissed me as a lone negative voice against his community building attempts.
I was still amazed about how adamant he had been at the meeting in delaying the vote. Even to me, it appeared extreme. The next day all the ducks fell in order. As a member of the Springwater Chamber of Commerce, I receive email communications. On Tuesday July 14, the following day, I receive a request from the Mayor to advertise in a special edition of the Barrie Advance for the grand opening of the new Administration Centre on Nursery Road. It now all makes sense. On checking with one councillor he was unaware of the special edition. I have no criticism of the Advance in its attempts to develop supplementary business in these tough economic times.
Now the mayor’s tactics make sense. It would be very embarrassing if the council passed a motion to move its print media requirements to the Springwater News and then have the Barrie Advance publish a special edition for the township’s grand opening of the administration centre. On checking the properties of the PDF I received promoting the Advance supplement, it was created June 17 and modified on July 2, well in the works some time ago. Since the promotional piece contains a direct written request signed by the mayor, he must have been aware of it. Any suggestion that since a decision on print media had not been reached, it was appropriate to go with the existing vendor, will not pass the smell test. I guess the mayor still thinks we are all jokers and that his cleverness goes unnoticed. He is always mentioning community building, but has no problem taking business away from a local business that pays taxes and give it to a firm outside the township.
I again ask the members of the public to become more informed of our local government. They are elected to respond to the best interests and common good of the residents of Springwater. Most elected officials have no personal agendas, but some do. Attending a few planning or council meetings will make it obvious who has their own personal agenda. You will then be better able to elect those who will hold your interests above their own in the next election in November 2010.
Keep informed of local events by visiting www.springwaternews.ca/.

If you have comments on any of these matters email me at bill.french@hotmail.com