Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "A
Tale of Whoa,Whoa,Whoa":
London has the ward system so it is easy to
identify your own personal villain. All the names & wards are now listed in
the comments on that Macleans' item. Sounds like small potatoes to people from
Aurora who got really ripped off by a Council back in the day.
***********
The story about London's Mayor and some Councillors bagging Queen's Diamond Jubilee medals prompts a memory.
City Council took the matter behind closed doors.. There would be little point in bestowing honour upon themselves in secret. So they reported out.
A comedy of errors.
Does anyone share my feeling, we are literally awash with honours and awards in Ontario.
There's also the swamp of regulations and acts to govern a Councillor's conduct.
The Municipal Act is quite specific about items that may be discussed behind cloed doors; matters of litigation, property deals and protection of privacy.
The clerk of the municipality is the statutory officer. It means his/her task to maintain the statutes.
Of course, a clerk can easily be fired and a new one hired . We've seen that here.
Something fishy is clearly going on in London . Covering political asses is not what is meant by protection of privacy in the Municipal Act.
I am reminded of an early incident in the Mormac Council.
Around about September 12th, maybe 2008, Regional Chairman and Chief of Police came to an in camera meeting with an offer to buy land we had for sale to build a new police headquarters.
Wonderful news. The meeting went well.
At a subsequent meeting Chief Administrative Officer was ordered NOT to proceed with negotiations.
It was a significant decision.
Time went by.
It was not reported out in public as required under The Act.
In November, three months later, The Auroran published the story that the town had refused to sell land to the Region for new Police Headquarters.
It was front page news.
Nowhere did it create a greater stir than in the hall of power where the decision was made.
Confidentiality of an in-camera meeting had been broken..
Never mind the Municipal Act calls for decisions made in camera to be disclosed , except when harm may come to the municipality.
None of that mattered.
Turning down opportunity for a head office building, with several hundred highest paid jobs in the Region And selling a parcel of land we had for sale, in a new industrial area, in the cachement neighbourhood of a vast new commercial development
was hardly likely to draw kudos to the decision-makers
Best keep that quiet.
Unlike London. Honouring selves as a Council with Queen's Jubilee medals wouldn't have the same impact if the secret was maintained.
London's Mayor, Joe Fontana, has been charged with fraud stemming from using government cheques, while he was a Federal Cabinet Minister, to pay expenses for his son's wedding .
We certainly have seen remarkable evolution in my time.
Monday 18 February 2013
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4 comments:
Did they really think the secret could be held close. Councils always leak. Not just in London, but here in Aurora. How else would I be very certain that Evalina swore at staff, the Wilson wrote poison-pen letters, that Staff were threatened with loss of their jobs, that Councillors were threatened, even physically, that Gallo was a tattle-tail etc etc etc......?????
And I have never met a councillor...
What, in your opinion, was behind that decision not to sell the land to the police?
For the lighter touch, Google " Baby Elephant Swimming in the Ocean "
Thank you.
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