By Pepper Parr
April 23, 2024
BURLINGTON, ON
This is what dysfunction looks like.
Can you identify the members of Council who are opposed to what the Mayor has chosen to do with her Strong Mayor powers?
Councillor Kearns is speaking. Councillor Galbraith really doesn’t want to be there. Councillor Nisan want to hide.
Councillor Stolte is saying that she agrees with Kearns completely. Councillor Sharman lets his face do his talking while Councillor Bentivegna wonders just how long this is going to last.
Later this week, hopefully we will edit the web cast and let you hear what the two woman had to say and how uncomfortable Galbraith was. It runs less than two minutes.
Really, did Councillor Galbraith follow through on his initial motion of asking the mayor to delegate back to council three of the strong mayor powers that she could?
He remained silent when Councillors Kearns, Nisan, and Stolte were very vocal in engaging the residents of Burlington as to what they felt needed to be done to promote democracy at council.
He also threw the 3 other councillors under the bus by not supporting them when motions were put forward regarding statements that the Mayor had made that denigrated both these councillors and a resident who questioned the strong mayor powers.
He must have been forgiven because in a photo-op last week he was pictured with the Mayor along with Councillor Sharman and Councillor Bentevegna.
So much for the “reset” that the mayor spoke about at the April 16th Council Meeting. Guess the “reset” doesn’t include Councillors Kearns, Nisan and Stolte.
This council is so fractured one has to wonder how they could possibly work together.
I’m not sure how much they have to work together, fractured or not. The Mayor has her Strong Powers and has taken over the whole show, so she can just order what she wants – and no problem.
If she needs some votes, with Galbraith turn-coated in with Sharman, Bentivegna, and herself, she has at least the 4 majority to rule in normal political matters.
This is how democracy becomes dictatorship – just make a system of structured, focused power around one person, like a Mayor, and watch what happens when the Mayor takes it really seriously.
I think you are watching it right now.
That is exactly why former long term Ajax Mayor Steve Parrish called the ability of the Mayor to hire and fire the CAO rather than Council as a Whole troubling. In our opinion the new CAO may have something to say about that once he has settled in. Tim Commisso remained silent as he is not the type to raise an issue that was no longer his business.
But we can always hope our new CAO has concerns about that. After all it was not the case when he accepted the position. He also had not seen his new now sole boss’s published remark in terms of those she needs to work with in a collaborative and effective manner, beginning with the words “For the most part” which we believe will become the Canadian Municipal Head of Council faux pas of the decade.