Everything About Nothing
By John Swartz
A hastily called special meeting of Council held Tuesday afternoon got off to a roaring stop. The central issue was the recently endowed strong mayor power granted by the province to the City of Orillia (and subsequently 168 other small communities).
The meeting was in order prompted by a petition signed by 6 councillors (Durnford, Fallis, Lauer, Campbell, Leatherdale and Czetwerzuk) under provisions of that Municipal Act:
Likely owing to the wording, “Before Tuesday April 15, 2025 at 4 pm,” the meeting was called to order at 3:55 p.m. Minutes later a count of people attending to witness the proceedings was 96. The first order of business was to approve the agenda, and this is where things fell apart.
Councillor Janet-Lynne Durnford wanted to add two items to the agenda.
“I had brought forward some motions and the primary one was calling on Mayor McIsaac to allow staff to draft the budget and to have public consultations and council consideration of the budget as we have been doing under the Municipal Act for years. That doesn’t require a legal opinion. And then under strong mayor powers we can choose not to exercise them to write the budget. The other part of the motion was – we call on Mayor McIsaac to delegate certain parts of his strong mayor powers back to council, which is allowed under the act,” Durnford said following the meeting. “So the specific authority that he can delegate authority to prior heads of departments and to restructure the organization of the corporation of the City of Orillia.”
Restructuring administration is nothing new. Mayor Ken McCann did the same thing, but council approved before any changes were made.
“And we did it at the beginning of our term,” Durnford added. “We restructured the City at the beginning of our term. Essentially what we are doing is calling on the mayor not to uses his powers.”
Before she could proceed, the clerk, Dan Kirby, jumped in to advise council may not even have authority to hold the meeting, citing council’s procedural by-law and Robert’s Rules of Order.
This set discussion off in a different direction.
As a side note, the quality of the audio available in the almost half million dollar renovated chamber is so poor there is no reasonable hope anyone could completely understand what is being said. Consequently no quotes from proceedings will be used in this story, except in the rare instances speakers were close enough to the microphones to overcome the deficiencies.
The gist of Kirby’s argument was council should avoid proceeding to waive the by-law and carry on with the meeting, especially in light of the fact the independent legal council asked for attendance at this meeting was not available.
For historical perspective: council created the procedural by-law, which has been amended numerous times (usually at the beginning of a council term) and provisions have been waived countless times since the by-law’s creation. Usually council has waived provisions of the by-law to get around built in delays (cooling off periods) when time sensitive items and decisions to be made are on the agenda – or when it suits them. In fact, this writer was the subject of waiving provision of the municipal code (by-law) when reappointed to the Orillia Public Library Board when the by-law did not permit reappointment at that time.
Counicllor Jay Fallis raised a similar point (despite the clerk’s advice), that council, as creator of the by-law, could proceed if it chooses; to which the clerk conceded they could.
The argument to not waive procedure, while technically correct from an administration perspective (the municipal code and procedure largely exists to give administration personnel marching orders, or reasons to deny actions requested by council, or the public. There has not been a case in memory, since 1995, any action taken by council which has waived procedure has resulted in a reversal or any legal action. Council makes the rules (subject to some oversight from the province through the Municipal Act) and council can change them. This was the subject of much back and forth between Councillor Dave Campbell and the clerk. Campbell eventually concluded even raising the possibility the whole thing could be derailed later convinced him (and the majority of council) to focus on rescheduling the meeting.
“What I was saying was that if we had proceeded, overruling our procedural by-law and allowing this meeting and allowing this discussion and out of that discussion we came up with concrete action, motions, of what we wanted to see happen and we supported those motions; because of waiving those decisions could be called into question at many different levels and this could be dragged on and we could get no action. With that in mind, my opinion was I will accept that procedural technicality in the interest of holding another meeting at another time when we can make sure that everything is as it should be and we can get some concrete action,” Campbell said to SUNonline/Orillia post-meeting.
Durnford said, despite the absence of the independent legal consultant, council could still discuss and make decisions on her proposed addition to the agenda. Kirby said – well, you have to think of the public; people may have made decision not to attend based on the published agenda, but may have decided otherwise had they known Durnford’s addition was going to be discussed.
This is interesting position considering there have been occasions in the past items were added to the agenda which were not included in the previously published agenda, and years ago there actually was an agenda heading for new business. Also, council was in the habit of waiving notice of motion in order to consider items not previously on a published agenda. In other words, it’s not a new concept to add items to an agenda.
Once enough councillors realized any decisions made at this meeting could be in jeopardy, they eventually voted to hold another meeting when an independent legal advisor could be on hand. Councillor Ralph Cipolla made the plea the meeting be held on a date to be chosen at 7 p.m. so the public could attend.
Councillor Dave Campbell also raised the point the meeting was not being live streamed.
The clerk responded with essentially the same reasons SUNonline/Orillia received earlier in the day from the manager of communications, Melissa Gowanlock:
“As outlined in the City’s Procedure By-law, meetings of Council may be livestreamed; however, livestreaming is not a requirement. This special meeting was called outside of the regular meeting schedule, and due to staff capacity, livestreaming is not possible.“
First question, there was nobody available during regular business hours (the meeting was at 4 p.m.)? It was also stated by the clerk at the meeting there is only one staff member who can operate the audio visual system. These things were said directly to this writer in the first case, and to the people in the council chamber, by people who know very well this writer knows how the cameras, audio, and transmission equipment fundamentally operate (any Grade 6 student adept with audio visual equipment – every class has that one kid – can operate the gear).
This raises a question of why no one could be found to livestream and thus create a complete record for the public record the proceeding.
Third question: How does this jibe with livestreaming of other meetings, such as public meetings for planning, or special meetings (e.g. February 20, 2025 on winter control; Feb. 4 on boundary changes) which were not part of council’s regular schedule, but livestreamed?
It should also be noted this writer’s phone automatically connects to the Wi-Fi system in the chamber when entering. When attendees noticed they could not connect to the Wi-Fi, attempts to manually connect the not automatically connected cell phone this writer carries failed, suggesting the Wi-Fi was turned off for this meeting.
When it was clear council was not going to go ahead with the meeting audience members began to leave before the vote (moved by Cipolla and seconded by Whitney Smith) was taken. Durnford insisted any meeting include the public forum and livestreaming. Once the meeting concluded Durnford conceded postponement to hold another meeting on the same subject with the independent legal counsel on hand and a public forum was better than nothing.
“It is fair to have that discussion with that item (public forum) on the agenda so people can see it ahead of time so they can speak to it,” Durnford said.
“I think today’s meeting was the best possible outcome. We had a chance to talk about our two options, waiving the procedural by-law, or not. I have no objection to the outcome today. This way we have an open meeting, the agenda is public, people can provide their feedback.”
Following the meeting Mayor McIsaac spoke to SUNonline/Orillia about the granting of strong mayor powers.
“I think strong mayor powers are a gift granted by the province and I think Orillia is a democracy just like anybody else and I intend to not change the way I have comported myself, or acted. If you think about it, Orillia has done a lot of things in terms of advancing priorities and will continue to work for those. Any action I have taken has been in concert with any municipal act, there’s been no contravention of that. Any action I have taken has only been in the interests of Orillia citizens and I will continue to do that,” McIsaac said.
But the move changes the dynamic of council and with administration, giving him the ability to act without the support of council.
“It could be viewed as that, but it could also be viewed as just another tool in the box. There are counterbalances. Say I decided to veto a motion, council can say, ‘we don’t like that,’ council can come back and overrule that.”
“There are certain things they cannot overrule, the rights that are unimpeded are the right to select/hire/terminate a CAO, you can appoint people to committee chairs and vice chairs, you can introduce a budget, I can organize the structure of the City In terms of staff and department heads and council cannot overrule that,” McIsaac said.
McIsaac would not comment on whether Amanpreet Singh Sidhu was on a short list of candidates to interview for the CAO position.
“One of the things that hampered me as citizens are asking, ‘we want you to talk about your decision.’ I can’t talk about that decision because of the confidential nature of it. There are things that are happening in committee (closed session) that are sensitive and I can’t talk outside the circle.”
It should also be noted, according to Cipolla council information regarding the revocation of the CAO appointment to Trevor Lee in favour of Sidhu was not available to council before or during the April 7 council meeting (even though it is dated April 7) when council discussed and voted to write the minister to take back granting strong mayor powers to Orillia.
If You Think The Preceding Is A Big Pile, Get A Load Of This
There was another special meeting scheduled to approve increasing the wastewater operating line item for hauling biosolids by $375K. The secondary digester, was damaged during the ice storm and things are accumulating. This means staff have to contract to haul more waste biosolids away, which they already do periodically, but now with increased frequency. They are also concerned spring runoff will make things worse.
Two bids were received for the work, but both exceed the $485,887 budget staff would normally be working with. Staff say it could be the increase in this line item may be offset by under spending in other areas of the 2025 budget, but in the event it is not the case they wanted authorization to exceed this particular line item now and deal with any overall shortages at year end. This works needs to be done ASAP so the lagoons do not overflow.
There was also a by-law on this extra agenda to authorize the execution of a 10-year marina management agreement between the City of Orillia and the Orillia and District Chamber of Commerce which comes into effect in October.
(Photos by Swartz – SUNonline/Orillia)
