Renfrew Clerk Carolynn Errett is going to find herself busier than she currently is.
During the last Renfrew Town Council meeting, no fewer than three councillors requested recorded votes. Usually votes sail past without this technicality, but when they do, anyone beating around the bushes for voting records of politicians would be stymied by the fact that the vote would be recorded as passed or defeated, and the vote count, but not the names of the individual councillors, nor the names of the mayor or reeve, would be attached to those votes.
It appears the campaign machines of three councillors have cranked up, and the sage advisors behind those campaigns have advised their boys to request recorded votes with names attached.
This is not due to a desire for increased specificity around voting, to make the democratic system function better in a chamber where sometimes it can be a free-for-all. This looks more like an attempt to lock rival candidates into identified votes so that those votes can be used against them on the campaign hustings.
It’s like writing everything down the person you’re speaking with is saying. It serves to somewhat intimidate that person by making them assume that must speak and act carefully, and it also ties them to a vote, something that can be brought up in the future if that person is running against you and you identify an issue where they were on one side of it and you were on the other. If you feel that issue is a winning issue that will resonate with the voting public, or if you feel you can spin the issue to resonate with the voting public, then you have the perfect foil for your campaign. At least on issues where you’d like to create some space between yourself and rival candidates.
The three last Tuesday were Councillors Andrew Dick, John McDonald, and Jason Legris. Two of them, Dick and Legris, are rumoured to be interested in taking a shot at the mayor’s job. The third, McDonald, keeps things pretty tight, often reading from prepared text when he makes remarks or asks questions, which is another indicator of something afoot. For all three, the seemingly methodical preparation prior to meetings sings the song of political readiness as the months tick by bringing us closer to a municipal election in 2026.
It’s also rumoured that Councillor Clint McWhirter and Reeve Peter Emon may be eyeing the mayor’s chain for themselves, and word is that the mayor himself, Tom Sidney may have another go at a job that hasn’t really been all that kind to him. If all of this were to be true, then only councillor Kyle Cybulski would not be running for mayor. And if he decides not to, or decides not to run for anything, then there is a distinct possibility that only one of the current crop of Renfrew municipal politicians may be around after November 2026. And if someone substantial in the community runs for mayor and wins, then the whole wagon load full of elected municipal politicians will go ass-over-tea-kettle, and the town will have an entirely new council in 19 months.
Renfrew’s administrative staff would go all balloons and noise-makers if this were to happen. I’m sure they’ve worked with challenging groups of politicians before, and I can’t imagine this group is a major improvement in their eyes. And that’s considering all the negative entanglements of the past. That, for sure, says something.
There’s a decided edginess in Council meetings now, something that existed before, but now something that rises to the top more easily and more often. And it’s often personal in nature, something you can see from the non-verbal and verbal communication, and something you hear from the tone. It’s kind of funny when it happens, because all the directors and managers and coordinators present along the perimeter suddenly find things of great import on their laptops, and their eyes lock on their screens, as if trying to avoid becoming collateral damage themselves or witnessing a car wreck in the making.
As I’ve indicated before, attending Council meetings live is a legitimate way to earn a master’s degree in sociology. If you’re into political science, though, maybe you need to jump on a different bus.
So, is this merely the beginning of a future barrage of recorded votes?
Hopefully not. Council meetings are frightfully long as they currently are, and recording each vote will not make them shorter.
NEWSMAGRENFREW 