Comments made by Councillor Andrew Dick in a previous council meeting resulted in an investigation by the town’s Integrity Commissioner, an investigation resulting in a recommendation that the councillor offer a public apology and receive a censure from Council.
I’ve seen Councillor Dick’s comments in text form, but have not reviewed the YouTube record of the meeting in question.
In question at the time was a contract tendered for renovations undertaken at the Town Hall, a project that ballooned in cost and went significantly over budget.
At issue was the fact that a councillor at the time, one Arlene Jamieson, owned a decor business in town, Venture Interiors, that had put a bid in to undertake some of the work on the Town Hall. It’s important to point out that Councillor Jamieson declared herself to be in conflict, and did not participate in any approvals specific to her business. It should also be noted that former Councillor Jamieson did nothing wrong, nor anythng illegal or untoward.
It’s also stated that council was considered to be a “lame-duck” council, meaning that, with an election upcoming, a lot of the big-time decision-making goes to the CAO, or Chief Administrative Officer because evidently mature decisions can’t be made buy elected officials who may not be returning. I see the attempt at logic of the Municipal Act, but removing decision-making from one group of several elected people and investing it in one unelected person strikes me as a bit of problem in its own right. But the drafters of the Municipal Act are Gods in the eyes of staffers, even though they’re mistake-prone and as political as the rest of us, and you can read that both ways.
All of that said, it’s fact that a Rentrew councillor had a business that was awarded a significant contract to be part of the renovation process at Town Hall. It’s also been reported that the contract was a sole-sourced contract, the type of thing that was part of the Ma-Te-Way imbroglio. And that the contract may have eventually been worth in the area of $400,000, when all was said and done, a figure double inn size to the original budget for the entire, overall project.
There is nowhere in the world where that state of affairs passes any test of propriety. Although totally legal, and although the councillor recused herself, the fact of the matter is that there was no way this side of anywhere where an elected councillor should have a business involvement, or a contractual involvement with the affairs of the municipality she was elected to represent. It doesn’t matter if she’s part of a lame-duck council and has no intention of standing for re-election. She’s still a councillor until a certain date, and that date hadn’t been reached yet.
Despite the recusal, the councillor accrued a benefit from the contract. She had to, why else would she be in business? How could it be otherwise? Whether arms-length or not, the optics of this situation are not good optics, especially when the same council she was a part of was the one in the saddle during the Ma-Te-Way debacle. To think that this would not bring into disrepute the affairs of Renfrew Town Council is in equal parts naive and tone-deaf. I don’t care if the hapless CAO was ”allowed” to do this under the Municipal Act. I simply do not care.
Just because the Municipal Act says you can do something, doesn’t mean you have to do that something. With everything going on at the time, what person is going to award a sole-sourced contract to a company owned by a sitting councillor, lame or otherwise? And then allow the company to be identified on documents by its business registration number, rather than its brand name? Are there no alarm bells anywhere? Is there a need to check batteries?
It’s been reported that, like Ma-Te-Way, the budget for Town Hall renovations spun quickly out of control, ballooning from an initial estimate of $200,000 to a reality of being two years late in completion and with a price tag of $2,000,000.
I’m not here to adjudicate the complaint made against Councillor Dick for his comments, as that work has already been undertaken by Tony Fleming, the Integrity Commissioner, and his report has been tendered.
Pushing that to the side, though, there is absolutely no world of integrity where this kind of thing is allowed to happen, much less stand. I don’t care about preferences given to local contractors just because they’re local. I want the best bang for my buck, and I want accountability on top of that. And I’m absolutely sick and tired of listening to the whole “Pembroke does it,” or “Deep River does it” or “industry standard” nonsense as a justification for making really bad decisions. In what universe does a CAO, annual salary pegged at around $156,000, not see potential for trouble when awarding a sole-sourced contract to a company where the principal owner is a current councillor? Against the backdrop of Ma-Te-ay?
Again, in what universe?
What truly concerns me is that, if this whole thing wasn’t revealed through a question by Councillor McWhirter around “furniture and furnishings,” the whole thing might have gone completely unnoticed, which is entirely unacceptable.
I’ll say that again.
Entirely unacceptable.
To me, Councillor Dick’s comment about the whole thing potentially “sliding under the table” is legitimate despite being uncomfortable. I understand it calls into question the integrity of the membership of that council. I don’t wish to impugn the reputation of anyone at any time, but for the love of all that is good and holy, what are we allowed to say when things like this keep popping up over and over again?
In my view, companies controlled by elected members of council should have no financial relationship with anything to do with the Town of Renfrew. If you don’t like that, don’t run for council. Or get out of that business. Or come up with something a little more palatable than simply recusing yourself or claiming to be a “lame duck.”
My basic argument is this: I have little problem with anything the former councillor did or has done. She was allowed to do those things. That said, I have a huge problem with the fact that the councillor was allowed to do so in the first place. Same goes for the departed CAO.
They derive their justification through the failures of the Municipal Act. To me, that’s not good enough. None of this needed to happen.
Notwithstanding Tony Fleming’s report, and due respect to his findings and recommendations, I can entirely understand the comments made by Councillor Dick.
NEWSMAGRENFREW 