After a hiatus, I am back. Since I have been asked, and prompted by a few people, I have decided to put forth my two cents worth. I was also not impressed by the Mayor’s sarcastic response to my question at the last Council Meeting or his vile response to a question from a Midhurst resident who also questioned why Council would even be considering downsizing when the Township is growing. I think the Mayor’s true colours and temperament are surfacing.
How’s this
for an unfiltered start, “My opinion is that the Mayor and Deputy Mayor you
elected (I didn’t vote for either!) together could not come up with a new idea
that would benefit the residents of Springwater in any real way, if their life
depended on it.” They both seem to be of that new generation of elected
officials who like the position and will do their utmost to protect it but, for
the most part, act as security guards and rubber stamp staff driven
initiatives. Don’t get me wrong, many staff generated ideas are quite good, so
that comment is not intended to be an insult to Township management or staff.
During my four years as Mayor, we got the job done with a vibrant collaborative
Council working cooperatively (not always agreeing but not polarized as today)
but Council was driving the bus and moved the township forward in many ways.
Times have changed in two years. By way of an analogy, if our current Mayor and
Deputy Mayor had been on the Titanic they would be gleefully rearranging the
deck chairs rather than trying to get people into the lifeboats.
I would like
to address two examples recently where the Mayor and Deputy Mayor were two peas
in a pod on matters that should have all residents questioning their motives.
It also brings into question their leadership abilities.
The first
was the Delegation of Power to the CAO at the start of the Pandemic. There was
absolutely no reason to do such a thing and few municipalities took that route.
For a Council to relegate its function to a senior staff member showed a total
lack of leadership on the part of both the Mayor and Deputy Mayor in a time of
crisis. It appears they wanted to distance themselves from anything that might
go wrong. Its their job to guide the ship in stormy waters, not abandon it or
pass it off to the harbour master. At first, I somewhat excused them for this
lapse in judgement as it somewhat appears, by their actions, that neither have
worked in a real world challenge or crisis, but when things settled down, it
took a new Councillor from Ward 4 to table a motion to rescind the delegation.
Guess who argued strongly against it? The Mayor and Deputy Mayor wanted the
Delegation to stay in place, and their arguments, if you watch the Council
meeting, were less than impressive. The Deputy Mayor suggested it was an
example of strong leadership. Not sure what planet she lives on. It took the
leadership of two new and two veteran Councillors to bring back control to
Council. I felt sorry that before the vote, the CAO, who had been delegated the
authority, made a passioned plea that he would like to see a unanimous
resolution, one way or the other instead of a split decision. Thank God, the
Mayor and Deputy Mayor, to avoid looking like morons, voted with the rest of
Council to give authority back to the Council members we all elected to lead
and guide the Township in good times and bad. The point is that the returning control
of the Township to Council should have been initiated by one of the Heads of
Council, not a new Councillor.
Let’s face
it, we are in the midst of this terrible pandemic, but our Two Heads of Council
are just going through the motions and don’t seem to get it. At the Council meeting
earlier this month, the Deputy Mayor put a motion forward, which would have
been a waste of time and tax dollars, having staff review and investigate the possibility
of changing our ward system to Councillors at large and possibly reducing the
Council from 7 members to 5 for the next election. Think about it. Since this
Council is advancing the Midhurst Secondary Plan (MSP), a new smaller
governance model would be ludicrous. (For those that are new to Springwater
the MSP will see Midhurst and area grow to close to 30,000 from the 3,500 of
today over the next 10 plus years and will become the poster child for the
worst type of urban sprawl, possibly in Ontario. It will make Bramalea look
like a well designed community). The point is that the township will more
than double in size in the next decade or so and the brilliant mind of the
Deputy Mayor supported by the Mayor thinks this is a time to consider changing
the governance model that works perfectly. She probably comes from the school
of “change for change sake”. The arguments against the motion were well
presented by the councillors from Ward 1, 2, 4 and 5. Of course, in lock step, after
these arguments were presented and those that spoke against the motion voted
against it, the Mayor and Deputy Mayor still voted in favour and ended up again
on the wrong side of the decision. I might also suggest to our Ward 3
Councillor, you don’t always have to vote with the Deputy Mayor. In times like
these we need true leadership at the top with some vision and plan of what
Springwater should look like in 5, 10 and 15 years especially when we rise from
the impacts of COVID-19. The good news for all of us is that some of the new
Councillors understand their responsibility, so we are at least going in a
positive direction with leadership coming from the bottom up. The one positive
thing that came out of the arguments on the motion was the consideration of
possibly dropping the Deputy Mayor position in any governance model change. The
DM position was only created to provide two members to County Council from the
lower tier municipality. Since the County is considering a whole new governance
model with less members, we might be able to eliminate this unnecessary DM position
and replace it with more direct representation, such as another Councillor. The
Deputy Mayor, as a separate position is not even recognized or required under
the Municipal Act and therefore has the same power and status of a Ward
Councillor anyway. Stay tuned.
Now is the
time to start finding out who your Councillor really is and educate yourself, as
our local Council Members, with positive ideas focused on their constituents,
can make our living in Springwater either wonderful or barely tolerable. The
good news is we get to decide.
Please
remember these are my thoughts and I am not asking you to agree. I respect your
freedom of expression and encourage you to SPEAK UP, before that freedom is
taken from us!!
Bill
French is a seasoned business leader with over 40 years experience and served
in senior positions of International Enterprises. Bill served as Mayor of
Springwater and a County of Simcoe Councillor from 2014 to 2018 and has taught
business at the college level for over 15 years
