Ontario premier Doug Ford has proposed extending so-called “strong-mayor” powers to 169 additional municipalities in Ontario, and the Town of Renfrew is one of them.
What makes a strong mayor out of a mayor?
Simply put, it allows the mayor, as Head of Council, to push forward agenda items without obtaining a majority vote of other members of Council. It’s something usually reserved for large urban areas like Toronto, or Ottawa, or any other densely-populated metropolitan areas.
But Renfrew? And also Arnprior, Pembroke, Deep River and Petawawa? Because they all made the cut, whereas urban powerhouse Douglas got left out, most likely because they’re part of a township government, and I guess we haven’t yet arrived at the point where rural townships require strong mayor powers.
The changes, if implemented, take effect May 1, 2025.
So this means that Renfrew’s very own mayor, the fellow who took office after a landslide, dozen-vote win over his rivals, will be a strong mayor who, for lack of a better way of putting it, can do whatever the hell he wants if he feels strongly enough about it.
It makes me try to recall all the votes where Tom Sidney was opposed to whatever was being discussed or proposed. Because, by extension, we can now assume that all of those discussions and policy moves would go his way if he invoked his strong mayor powers. This is a kick in patoot for Renfrew residents, and a double kick to existing councillors and the reeve who can now, at least theoretically, be shoved aside when it comes to decision-making.
Debate all you want fellas, and we’ll get your commentary into the minutes, but when it comes down to it, you could have just stayed at home, but thanks for coming out anyways.
Something like that.
Giving a small-town mayor, the head of a council consisting of seven members, presidential powers is a bit much in any exercise in democracy. And it’s a bit of a slap in the face to councillors, who each had over a thousand people vote for them, to take a back seat to a guy who barely scraped in 800 votes himself, and that with a contender breathing right down his neck a few votes back..
This is what you get when you manage to inspire fewer than half the eligible voters to actually care enough to come out and vote in the first place. When a guy with 873 out of a possible 6,459 votes ends up being the ultimate arbiter of anything and everything that crosses his path, should he choose to go that way.
I’m not sure why Premier Ford went the way he did on this. Were small-town mayors clamouring for this power? Were they jealous of their urban cousins? Is there something about Renfrew that cries out similarities with places like Toronto and Mississauga, both communities of over a million people?
A mayor that inspired fellow Council-members to show their lack of confidence in him by asking him to resign, something he refused to do. I’m not saying that they should have, or that he should have, but it’s a hell of a journey to go from having your resignation demanded to being invested with the powers of a strong mayor.
It’s a bit of a head-scratcher, that much is for real.
So what will we see?
I have a hard time seeing Tom Sidney turn into Donald Trump with his own flashing Sharpie pen signing executive edicts. I also don’t see him unilaterally pushing an exclusively “Made in Tom” policy agenda. Despite everything, I view Mr. Sidney as a responsible member of Council, one who would very likely be uncomfortable with these new powers should they take effect. I don’t see him as a “my way or the highway” kind of leader, nor do I see a reincarnation of Libya’s Muammar Ghaddafi. I guess we’ll have our answer if we see Tom strutting around town with a Douglas MCArthur hat, a corn-cob pipe, and special edition-dictator sunglasses.
But these powers can certainly be used if the mayor feels strongly enough about any one particular issue, and that HR Liaison thing a couple of weeks back may be an example of something that could have gone the other way had the mayor wanted to get his preferred result.
I suppose one thing about strong mayor powers would be the idea that, in theory, policy would be mayor-driven rather than staff-driven, so that would be a potential positive. Staff would argue up and down and sideways that they don’t drive policy, but they’d be full of hot air and gases. From my observation, most of what happens in this sleepy Valley town comes from staff putting something on the agenda, making a recommendation as to which option to pursue, and then standing back hoping to enjoy their divine right to complete and utter confidence accorded to them by the politicians, who sit and swat flies as one thing after the next comes and goes, often with imperfect explanations.
It’s not the money the councillors are in it for, because if it is, then they must be in pretty rough financial shape in order to endure what they endure for maybe $17,000/year, while the mayor pulls in over $40,000, and with the elimination of the reeve after the next election, probably more in the area of $70,000. The staff, of course, make double that, and some of them even more than double.
So now, the organizational chart, or decision-making hierarchy, looks like this:
Perhaps this is an overly-alarmist take on a controversial power, but still, one could in good conscience articulate some measure of concern.
You’ll hear Council invoke the term “lame-duck” to describe a council that’s on it’s last few months of their term. Because we’re too clever by half, we’ve made it so that our elected representatives have no juice to make policy decisions as their terms draw to a close. So instead of a four-year term as advertised, it’s now a three-year term in practical terms, with the remaining part of their term an exercise in institutional illegitimacy where they keep the furniture busy, but with little to no real effect.
Do strong mayor powers trump the “lame duck” silliness, or is a mayor, despite his/her superpowers, handcuffed just as much as he would be by this wounded duck syndrome? An interesting fact is that staff face no “lame duck” restrictions. Of course not, they’re staff.
All brilliant human ideas look one way on paper, but could look a much different way in the wild. I guess we’ll just have to sit back and let it play out to determine if this decision by the premier is a good one.
NEWSMAGRENFREW 