Eddie Is Outed

by Alan Halberstadt

The Eddie Star, as one pundit is calling it, missed the biggest story in town Monday night. By rejecting a bid to create a deputy mayor’s position, Mayor Francis declared that he is running for re-election.

In a report to Council from Council Services, it was revealed that the Municipal Act allows the sitting mayor to block the creation of a deputy mayor in the ensuing term of office. When I asked the mayor if he would support the possibility, he answered in the negative, trumpeting his supposedly democratic system of having all 10 Councillors rotate each month as acting mayor when he is absent.

Is there any doubt anymore, despite the weekly soap opera in The Star, that Eddie will officially declare his own coronation for another four years in early June?

What the mayor wouldn’t say Monday night is that this deliberately fragmented system of 10 acting mayors prohibits all Councillors from attending the agenda-setting meetings which he chairs weekly in a system he created when he became mayor.

Under this system, Mayor Francis has effectively buried or strategically delayed many reports near and dear to the hearts of other Councillors, but Monday night none of them had the parts to say so publicly.

When Percy Hatfield, Council’s parody of Don Cherry, made a motion to officially kill the deputy mayor idea, only Councillor Ken Lewenza and myself voted in the negative. Councillor Ron Jones put his head down and didn’t vote.

Several of the rest, while grumping privately about the mayor’s clandestine agenda setting, obviously believe that they can ride Eddie’s coattails to re-election in October. They seem content that their truckload of unanswered Council Questions, dating back to 2006, are left to fester.

So the whiff of oppression will continue to hang over Council Chambers, most likely for the next 4 1-2 years.

After Monday night, the electorate needs to consider the grave consequences of Eddie’s return to office, along with the current band of weaklings. We are talking oligarchy here.

As for me, I will continue, when time allows, to offer examples in this space of worthy issues initially brought forward by Councillors that have been kicked to the curb, or seriously mangled, in the mayor’s secret agenda-setting bunker.

Speaking of manipulating the agenda, the report explaining the relatively painless exercise to disconnect the mayor’s mute button, which I asked for before last Christmas, magically showed up on the supplementary agenda last Friday. The deputy mayor report was on the Communications agenda for Monday, May 10th. Both the sup and communication items are not revealed to Council and the general public until Friday evening, leaving virtually no time for public reaction or delegations to get up to speed and register as delegations.

Brave citizens like Al Nelman have railed against this chicanery many times in the past. I have also raised concerns, but the practice continues. This is another powerful reason why a second elected person, or more, should be allowed in the bunker.

Bylaw 185-2005, adopted unwittingly by Council, including myself, on July 11 2005 as a housekeeping item, added the following clause to the city’s procedural bylaw: The Council Agenda will be established through the Agenda Review Process, consisting of the Mayor, Chief Administrative Officer, City Clerk and other members of administration for the purpose of determining capacity for consideration at any given meeting.

I have recently learned the real meaning of this clause. Any member of administration, if invited, can enter this inner sanctum, while 10 elected officials are barred. How frightening is that?