By Pepper Parr
BURLINGTON, ON September 13, 2011 – The ethic of a city council takes a little time to develop. Some city council’s play fast and loose with the rules and others are super tight. Every city council has a procedural by-law and there is always at least one member of council that knows the thing inside and out – often better than some of the Clerks.
In Burlington that would be Ward 1 councillor Rick Craven. At one point he was carrying the by-law under his arm and quite willing to read sections out to a council member who was being too casual with the rules.
At every committee meeting the chair is expected to ask if there are any conflicts of interest and during my time in watching this Council I’d never ever seen anyone declare a conflict. Jack Dennison should be declaring a conflict on a number of issues but he tends to disregard the question – if he does make a comment he tends to mumble it.
This Council has Blair Lancaster, the rookie member for Ward 6 – and Blair is a real stickler for the rules – sometime too sticky. There was an occasion when the Downtown Core Commitment was being discussed and Lancaster, who owns a downtown business that she doesn’t operate chose to declare a conflict and for the part of the meeting that was discussing that matter – Lancaster left the Council table and sat in the public gallery. We had not seen THAT before.
And then guess what happened. A week or so later councillor Dennison declared a conflict of interest on a matter and he too left the Council table and sat in the public gallery. Dennison looked a bit like a school boy who was sent outside the classroom.
This Council is finding itself and making it mark as to how it is going to do business.
Quite a change – a welcome change. The principle matters.
Dennison has frequently had conflict problems. He and his family own Cedar Spring Health and Racquet Club which provides some services to the city which require Dennison not to discuss or vote on issues that re related to parks and recreation use of outside services.
Dennison got himself in a bit of a pickle during the 2008-2009 recession when his sports club took a serious financial hit when membership declined seriously.
Dennison did what any prudent business man would do – he cut back on his expenses. Problem was one of those expenses was city property taxes which the club didn’t pay for a period of time. And that is permitable – when you don’t pay your taxes you pay an interest penalty – which made prudent business decision.
The tough part is how does a corporation not paying its property taxes when one of the officers and a director of that corporation sits as a member of Council. Sticky wicket that one – but Dennison got away with it. His constituents re-elected him.
There was never any question about Dennison taking advantage of his vote on council. He never takes anything that he hasn’t earned and deserved.
But Blair Lancaster has brought a higher ethic to the Council chamber and we can expect the Councillor for Ward 4 to be in the public gallery more often.
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