Guergis: Moving ON

Tony Guergis says he worked as hard as he could to be the best warden he could, to make Simcoe County the best place he could. After three terms he declined nomination for a fourth.
By DOUGLAS GLYNN Midland Free Press
-Looking relaxed and as confident as ever, Springwater Mayor Tony Guergis settles into a chair in his office at the township’s new administration building to talk about his years as the warden of Simcoe County and why he chose not to seek a fourth term.
A couple of days earlier the three-term warden had stood before his peers in the county council chamber and surprised many people by declining the nomination.
“I’ve been clear in my position that leadership is stand at the lead, or get out of the way. I am prepared to get out of the way and let those who have chosen to take leadership take it.”
“I’m the most-elected person in Simcoe County history. How can you possibly say anything bad about that?” he says, punctuating the statement with his trademark grin.
He’s asked about his ups and downs.
“I actually haven’t (had any),” he replies.
“As much as people like to try and pin that 20-year history on the guy there at the end of the day, I was not in office for any of the decisions that brought that thing to life or to approve it,” he says, in an apparent reference to Site 41.
“It’s convenient for some media to say, that’s a neat package for us to be able to point the finger at.”
He says many good things happened during his years as warden, “but it was unfortunate that the only media (coverage) we seemed to be able to get was on that one negative issue. That (issue) seemed to sell print” and the real important focal point of the county became lost.
“I’ve worked my tail off to ensure that I did my job as the warden to the best of my ability. We’ve been a very responsible municipality and time will prove integrity right.
“When everybody’s done having their fun and the dust settles there will be a point where people say, Okay, so we did that and we were victorious and critical and vilified who we needed to, but where are we today?
“I think we’re right back to, well, the work that Tony Guergis did was good and worthy work. And we don’t have a solution.
“At the end of the day you have to have somebody say, I need you to find a solution. We can’t all run under our desks and say its comfortable now -somebody has to say we have to find a solution.
“So I did bring leadership to that issue.
“I put forward a resolution on my own to start a waste management steering committee to engage all the partners throughout the region, including the First Nations, Barrie and Orillia, to move forward on coming up with a collaborative solution that includes the public.
“Anybody who responsibly ever sat and talked to me knows I wasn’t part of the problem, I’m part of the solution. But, if you needed a villain to advance your position I was a good target.
“All through my career I governed myself on the foundation of my faith. If it wasn’t for that I would not have made it through.
“Many people said, how do you ever manage to stand up through this? I think I’ll be judged far beyond anything anybody here can say or do.
“As well as I knew I was doing the right thing, I do it. The right thing was to stand up for the direction of the 31 people who elected me in the democratic process that said, this is what we want you to say.
“I don’t think anybody ever wanted Tony Guergis’s real opinion, because nobody ever asked. Nor, would I probably have answered.
“That’s the image that was necessary and that’s what people created. Those who know me know how hard I work; know how dedicated I am to any job I take on.
“The successes of the county of Simcoe cannot be measured. So many good things happened.”
Among the high points of his unprecedented three terms as warden, he cites council’s decision to increase the warden’s term of office to two years beginning in 2011.
“That was recognition for the role I played from one year to the next, (it was their way) to say: we not only agree you did a good job, we agree that it’s important that everybody get that opportunity to do that same thing.
“That’s a great legacy!”
He cites the establishment of a historical and cultural fund -“even though it’s only $57,000” -and the commissioning a pair of bronze busts of John Graves Simcoe as a first step in meeting that cultural responsibility.
The busts -created by renowned sculptor and Hillsdale resident Marlene Hilton Moore -are on display at the county administration building and the Midhurst and the Simcoe County Museum.
He recalls that 10 miniature works were also created. “I was able to present one of those to the current Lt.-Governor in whose office it will sit.
“On the social services side, I got to open those aboriginal day care spots for that facility in Barrie. To see the province, the county, the city and the First Nations there were really highlights for me.
“I was also part of the groundbreaking for the cancer care centre we all worked so hard to see take place. I had a shovel in my hand and broke ground on that project and broke ground on the first ever university in Simcoe County and the new health and wellness centre for Georgian College.
“I brought to the floor of the house (council) every single decision. There was not a discussion that took place that everybody in the house didn’t have part in, whether it was creating regional partnerships with Honda; with the base commander at CFB Base Borden. I didn’t just bring him to council to have him talk. I had councillors go to the base and the base commander took them on a bus and toured them around his base for the first time.”
“I had employers from Midland and Alliston and the agriculture community stand in front of council and say, here’s what I do for you in your community every day. Here’s how I think we can partner and build those relationships. So I always had an open door policy.
His decision to decline the nomination, he concedes, was not made on the spur-of-the-moment.
“I really had gone through a major, a matrix of (the) value to myself, value to my family of continuing in this particular job; (of the) value to the county, value to Springwater, to the county staff, to council and to the residents.
“I set out a matrix of what it would mean for my leadership to continue; what it would mean to step aside; to run and lose, or to run and win. It became clear after going through that matrix that the right thing to do was try to bring unity to this group and take away the excuses of those who are bent on not finding solutions and not working together.
“There are people who this does work for. You know that! The fighting and the nonsense works for some people, particularly going into an election. The longer the turmoil and nasty attacks continue it’s good for some people’s campaigns and the public always lose in those situations. Unless you have people working together with strong vision and leadership, you’re going to lose. I saw the potential for the volatility to just continue and the fact it could cost the county. The county needs respect and a team of 32 people working together.
“I turned off my Blackberry and my phone for a couple of days and went through that whole analysis.
“Based on that analysis and the fact I’d already passed the 2010 budget; that I was able to pass the resolution to get the waste management solution with everybody working together, and the resolution that put behind us the Barrie-Innisfil debate.
“So, that’s a lot of accomplishments. What more could I do in 2010? What more did I need to do other than continue to wave the flag! I think Cal Patterson can wave the flag.”
He concedes he was disappointed that the City of Barrie didn’t become involved in the area-wide Growth Plan. He blames the province, not Barrie.
“The province asked someone to work with Barrie and Innisfil on a facilitated, negotiated process to define the new line for the Barrie Innisfil situation.
“At the same time two government ministers came and said to Tony Guergis and Simcoe County, we want you to lead an area-wide growth plan and include everybody.
“Barrie’s position was, why would we get involved in that with 17 other partners when we are in a deal with two partners where we have 50 per cent of the say and we can define our future through that process.
“So, it was a failed attempt. The province should have defined that and said the process with Innisfil is a separate process; the county is talking about transportation, about networking on a grander scale, about tourism and economic development and you need to be part of that.
“That simple definition would have brought success to the whole thing. Very simply, there’s the flaw in that whole thing. It was destined to fail.
“I saw the growth plan as the most successful planning process in the entire province of Ontario. Nobody did what we did. We had 17 partners agree.
“If you look around the entire province nobody did what we did. We did it first. That was a tremendous success. Unfortunately, again our message went out that somehow, because Barrie wasn’t there, it didn’t happen.
“I don’t blame the city. I couldn’t get them to understand that we were not opposing them; we were opposing the fact they were not seeing the two processes as separate and worthy; that you could participate in both processes and still be successful. That was sort of the disappointment for me.
“Having said that I couldn’t be more pleased with the end product which is our official plan (OP), which is a consensus product that all 17 parties agreed to and has gone to the province and is awaiting approval.”
The county’s OP allocated to each of its 16 member municipalities an increase in population and job numbers they could expect to have by 2031 under the Growth Plan.
However, a proposed Growth Plan amendment, called Simcoe Area: A Strategic Vision for Growth – if adopted – would take away from most of the county municipalities 40,000 of the population allocated under the county’s OP; and redistribute that population increase to what the paper calls the “urban growth nodes; namely, Barrie, Orillia, Bradford, Alliston and Collingwood.)
Asked about the reduced population numbers, Guergis said he had asked the (then) deputy premier (George Smitherman) to restore the 40,000 allocation.
“I’m going to say we will get it, but not in one fell swoop and not easily. There will be negotiated rationale for each incremental increase.
“The Minister of Finance will say, yes, we need to improve certain situations; the minister of tourism will say, we need to have more allocation here to accommodate this particular project; the minister of infrastructure and renewal will come forward with some necessary population to accommodate places like Penetanguishene and, collectively, my guess is that will equal 40,000 over time.
“Nobody likes to say, hey, Tony Guergis, you were right all along.”
But, he notes, getting a fair deal from the province requires working together.
“I’ve had the benefit,” he says, “of being there (at county) on a consistent basis and of seeing that we in Simcoe County, in Barrie and in Orillia are the lowest funded per capita for health care; we are among the lowest funded, consistently, for 10 or 20 years in education; the lowest funded for social housing, which is such an important issue now with homelessness.
“If that isn’t a call to action to the Mayor of Barrie, the Mayor of Orillia and to the County of Simcoe to say, collectively, we have to find ways to work together, then there is something wrong with the way we are doing our jobs. The public deserve that kind of representation.
“The county’s funding for social housing is at the exact same rate as it was when they (the province) downloaded the service to us. They’ve never increased the funding.
“The divide and conquer scenario has gone on long enough. There’s too much to gain and so much has been lost.
Good examples, he said, are paramedic services have delivered regionally. They are delivered in Midland alongside the fire and police. And they are delivered in Barrie alongside their fire and police service. It is possible for us to work together and find solutions. You see fire departments working together.
Guergis added, you see it in places like Royal Victoria Hospital, which rose to become a regional cancer care centre. They changed their name to Simcoe-Muskoka to reflect the Local Health Integration Network (LHIN) and they came to the county with that and acquired $20 million in funding.
“My hat’s off to them for realizing they need to think without borders. And if we can do that in some cases, there’s great successes that can be had. And the province immediately -once they had those partnerships in place -was at the table with funding.
“That’s because they found a way to work together.
“If we come together the province will have to come to the table because our voice will be so strong.”