Warnock, Hughes, Patterson present platforms

Patterson promises Ogden FOI matter to come before council
By Kate Harries AWARE Simcoe December 7 2010
Members of the newly elected county council heard from the two men who are seeking the position of deputy warden this morning.
They were given 10 minutes. Tay Mayor Scott Warnock took two and a half minutes. Oro-Medonte Mayor Harry Hughes was pushing 11 minutes when he was cut off by Adjala-Tosorontio Mayor Tom Welsh (in the chair by virtue of being the longest serving member of council).
Which does not mean that Warnock is always a man of few words. That would be surprising, given his 15 years as morning man on Midland’s CKMP radio. Still, it was curious that he chose to be succinct in outlining his municipal experience as a member of Tay council since 1997, and of county council for three years.
Hughes gave a more wide-ranging account of his life and experience, which includes 35 years as a school principal as well as a master’s degree in measurements and evaluation, and work as a “certified mediator.” He touched on his early life growing up on a farm, his current volunteer gig as a coach of a midget hockey team, made a joke about the Leafs and detailed an ambush of a provincial minister which he said resulted in the township getting funding for its airport.
The position of deputy warden is a new one, created by the outgoing council as one of their last actions. The warden, and now the deputy warden, are elected by secret ballot of the 32 mayors and deputy mayors who make up county council.
Tay Township being something of a backwater in media terms, Warnock doesn’t have much of a county profile. In an interview, he said his proudest achievement is the development and completion of the Tay Shore Trail – the “Cadillac of trails,” he says, with 18 kilometres fully paved the entire length of the township.
Site 41 activists know him for his steadfast opposition to the landfill site. He was one of the seven who voted to give up the certificate of approval back in September, 2009. That was the day the majority of council (Hughes among them) voted to kill the project – but balked at revocation, an indication they were keeping options open for sale of the licensed property to a private dump operator. Fortunately, in May 2010, a vote to request revocation of the C of A was finally passed.
Controversy dogs Oro-Medonte, so Hughes is better known. He was linked to former Essa mayor David Guergis’s campaign against conservation authorities and pushed for his township’s appeal of the Nottawasaga Valley Conservation Authority’s 2009 budget, an appeal that was recently dropped after much expenditure by various parties of taxpayers’ money on staff time and lawyers’ fees.
The vote is set for Thursday, December 14.
The deputy warden’s function will be to back up and share some of the workload of the warden – a position for which there appears to be no challenger to Wasaga Beach Mayor Cal Patterson’s re-election bid.
“I understand growth and how to handle it,” said Patterson who presented his platform and took questions from colleagues as part of yesterday’s all-candidates’ session.
He revealed that he has a meeting set for 8:15 tomorrow morning at Queen’s Oark with Infrastructure Minister Bob Chiarelli. “Maybe I can explain to him how to handle growth as well.”
Asked by Bradford West Gwillimbury Mayor Doug White what is the key message he’s taking to the meeting with Chiarelli, Patterson replied, “Respect Simcoe County. I don’t believe they’re showing that to us.”
He added that he expects Chiarelli to come up with infrastructure money “to make things happen.” With a provincial election coming up, he said he’s confident of success.
Stephan Kramp served notice that the new deputy from Midland won’t be shy, with a couple of pointed questions, the first relating to the negotiations and legal costs in the as-yet unfinished dispute over Stephen Ogden’s Freedom of Information request for the Site 41 calibrated computer model (MODFLOW).
Patterson didn’t provide any figure but promised that the matter will be brought before the new council and “this council will vote on whether we continue on with it or say we’re done. If there’s going to be additional costs everyone in this room is going to be aware of what those additional costs are going to be to the taxpayers of Simcoe County.”
Kramp then asked Patterson whether he thought the waste diversion targets adopted by the last council were aggressive enough (that’s been a matter of continuing controversy as Zero Waste advocates, some of whom are now at the council table, push for more ambitious goals). Patterson said that he thought they were.
Also at this morning’s meeting, which was an orientation session, various councillors served notice of their intention to seek key positions in the county hierarchy.
Clearview Mayor Ken Ferguson will be running for chair of the corporate services committee: Stephan Kramp, Tom Walsh and Oro-Medonte Deputy Mayor Ralph Hough will seek the vice-chair position.
Ramara Deputy Mayor Basil Clarke wants to chair the performance management committee and Bradford West Gwillimbury Mayor Doug White wants to be vice-chair.
Clearview Deputy Mayor Alicia Savage is after the chair of the human services committee; Severn Deputy Mayor Judith Cox (the second longest serving member of county council) and Wasaga Beach Deputy Mayor David Foster are running for vice-chair.
The chairs and vice-chairs of the standing committees make up another important committee, the governance committee, that could bring forward major changes to the way county council is elected and does business.
Nominations for all positions, including the warden’s, are open until the December 14 meeting.