The Buzz Around Town

How can minutes of a council meeting be doctored?

The answer is they cannot. It took a conference between Neil Garbe and Christopher Cook, the town solicitor to come up with an idea to produce minutes which would "to save the town harmless" from the actions of the mayor and four councillors on May 12th.

Accusations and allegations encouraged and facilitated by the head of the council and condoned by the majority of the council were false and unsubstantiated. To permit them in a council chamber before an audience was not only reprehensible, it was a gross abuse of process and rendered the town liable for legal action.

The vote to waive the procedure bylaw, even if passed, to allow the comments to be included in the public record, dug the hole wider and deeper.

When the Mayor requested the individual to provide her comments in writing to staff, the page was handed immediately to the secretary of the council meeting who sits alongside the podium to provide assistance to speakers.

That action can be seen on the video tape.

Twice during the infamous process, although not by intervention, the town solicitor attempted to advise "this matter is not for council to deal with". His advice was ignored.

If none of it should have been allowed to happen in the first place; if the clear objective of the exercise was to do harm to a person's reputation before an audience, then placing the comments in the public record would exacerbated the offence and would have made the corporation complicit.

A way out had to be found

The option was to follow the illegal direction of council and place the written comments in the record. Or....not follow the direction and for the C.A.O. the town solicitor and the clerk to jointly offer an argument of precedent.

Whether it was credible was neither here nor there. The remarks could not be allowed to form part of the public record.

It was fascinating to watch. The municipality had to be protected after the failure to stop wrong-doing from happening. The mayor publicly stated a meeting with the C.A.O. and the solicitor had been pre-arranged. Did that suggest they were a party to the process ?

Once the mess was created , it didn't matter how things would look to the public, they could not , in law, do what council directed outside of law.

Another interesting fact is neither the chief administrative officer nor the town solicitor are statutory officers. They are not responsible for the public record.

A Director of Corporate Services, formerly municipal clerk, is the statutory officer responsible for keeping the public record. The requirements for record keeping are spelled out in the Municipal Act. A clerk is sworn into office as are elected officials. The Oath of Office provides both authority and obligation under the law. If the law is not upheld by a person sworn into office, that represents a breach of trust, which is an offence under the Criminal Code of Canada.

Council direction isn't worth a hill of beans, if it contravenes the law.

The problem is, the clerk has the statutory authority and obligation to advise council, but by establishing a pecking order which makes the clerk subject to the authority of a chief administrative officer, who has neither understanding nor experience of municipal procedures and throw into the mix, a Mayor who is convinced she is Supreme Ruler and councillors who also believe it , " you got trouble in River City " big time.

Neither is a town solicitor a statutory officer, but he is governed by the ethics and standards of the Ontario Law Society.