Municipal Reform #1 Election issue
By Meade Helman
I have written here before about municipal reform. I think our current way of conducting municipal business is unfair and not democratic. Officials get elected, often without having a majority if there are more than two candidates running.
Then we have very limited input into the actions of our council. In BWG we have two regular council meeting a month with a winter break and a summer break. You can watch but not speak except under certain limited conditions and, if you participate in public forum or deputation you can’t ask questions of councillors.
Our councils seem to worry more about pleasing developers and staff rather than residents. I think my favourite example of this was when Simcoe County and Springwater Township asked the Ontario Municipal Board to expel the Midhurst Ratepayers from proceedings relating to the county Official Plan. The county and the township were simply not prepared to allow the ratepayers to be heard. They may regret it because the ratepayers will be heard – Margaret Atwood is proof of the fact that their message is spreading across the province.
Enough! Petition your favourite political party to make municipal reform a centre plank in their platform. Let us put an end to our elected dictatorships on a local level. Let’s take back our government and have government of people not government by staff and developers. We need term limits for councillors and mayors; limit closed meeting investigations to the ombudsmen; tighter controls on closed meetings; stricter controls on the levels of municipal debt; and the ability to recall politicians.
While this would be a good start, I am sure there are other things that can be down to make our municipalities more democratic. What are your thoughts?
I fully agree with all your suggestions Meade.
The majority of politicians seem to forget that they were elected as public servants by their constituents to represent them and to do what’s best for the community that they’re supposed to protect!
It is their duty to serve the taxpayers, not the developers and corporate sector. However, they seem to spend most of their time engaging with developers behind closed doors and not allowing much input from the taxpayers. We are made to feel like outsiders and that we have no right to say or question anything.
There’s very little openness, transparency, or accountability in government anymore! We definitely need municipal reform so that we can hold the people we elect to account!
I am running for the NDP nomination in York-Simcoe and I am making municipal reform a key priority. Here are the issues I’m currently looking at. Please let me know if there are others you want me to look at as well:
– reversing the Liberal’s 2009 amendment to the Municipal Elections Act that repealed the offence of illegal campaign financing. Currently it is very difficult to hold councillors accountable for illegal financing under the Act.
– changes to spending and donation limits, in particular from non-residents and corporations with a view of reducing the influence of developers etc.
– simple, cost effective mechanisms for residents to force the opening of illegal closed meetings and to quash decisions made in closed meetings. The ombudsman has recognized this is rampant, but there is little practically residents can do when this happens other than complain to the ombudsman (and some municipalities have removed the ombudsman). Meanwhile the meeting is still secret. This needs to be fixed.
– OMB reform
– other municipal council procedures (agendas, disclosure, presentation lengths etc) should be legislated to ensure they are fair. Currently there are few safeguards for residents.
– Better municipal freedom of information legislation.
– introducing the concept of community benefit into planning instruments
This list is not exhaustive (a sad comment on the state of our municipal institutions). If anyone has any questions or wants more detail on these items please feel free to contact me at any time.
Good starting list, unfortunately what is truly important is where your party stands on these issues. how do you plan on influencing your party’s platform?