When Springwater Township’s Deputy Mayor George Cabral was campaigning in the last municipal election, he advised potential supporters that one of the reasons he was running for that position was to represent their interests at the county level, where both the mayor and deputy mayor have a seat.
It often ignited a spirited conversation.
“I can't recall any of the hundreds, if not thousands, of residents I spoke to, at their front doors, during that campaign that didn't wonder why two representatives were attending county when one seemed to make more sense to them,” Cabral said in an email.
“While cost reduction was certainly a consideration for many, some suggested that leaner would mean more efficient, with fewer cooks involved," he added.
Well, fewer "cooks" may be overseeing the menu in the future.
Earlier this week, county council voted on adjusting the size of council from 32 members to 17, including a full-time, appointed warden.
The recorded vote finished in a 16-16 tie, with the weighted vote resulting in 88 in favour of reducing the size of council with 57 against.
To take effect, these decisions must still be approved through a triple-majority process.
Cabral says he's in favour of adjusting the size of county council, even though there may be some merit to maintaining the current size.
“I will admit that there are some very good arguments, as provided by many learned county councillors in debating this issue, to remain status quo at 32,” he said.
Essa Township’s Mayor Sandie Macdonald and Deputy Mayor Michael Smith voted in favour of maintaining the status quo.
Macdonald said there was not enough information available for her to make any other decision.
“I’m a facts-based person,” she said. “There weren’t enough answers to the questions councillors had. Without that, I had to support the status quo.”
Oro-Medonte’s Mayor Randy Greenlaw and Deputy Mayor Peter Lavoie said they were “indifferent to the size of council provided there are sufficient advantages provided for any changes to its size.”
Responding to questions from a reporter together via email, Greenlaw and Lavoie said the group of councillors who supported the adjustment provided two benefits — a savings on council wages, which they say represents about $1.50 per resident per year — and more efficiencies.
“They did not provide what those efficiencies were,” they said.
Greenlaw and Lavoie provided more than a dozen reasons why county council shouldn’t be contracted, including the breadth of expertise among its current members, the advantage of "institutional knowledge," the importance of having two representatives available at the local municipality who have full knowledge of county affairs, and having sufficient councillors to fill the committee and board positions.
They also noted that a larger council improves the chances that the council will be more culturally representative of the electorate.
“Reducing its size will, as council is currently constituted, make council less representative,” they said.
Greenlaw and Lavoie said the current council size prevents overloading of the mayor position.
“In addition to the support needed at county, mayors will need more support at their local level to operate effectively,” they said. “This will be particularly the case for smaller municipalities.”
They added that while local council positions are believed to be part-time, in the case of the mayor and deputy mayors, this may not hold true.
Springwater’s Mayor Jennifer Coughlin is in favour of cutting county council’s numbers in half. She sees it as a return to county council’s roots.
“I think it’s important to note that at the inception of the County of Simcoe council in 1843, one mayor, one reeve from every municipality would sit to make decisions,” she said during a break in Wednesday night’s township council meeting. “It wasn’t until the 1990s, when amalgamation happened, that there was two (representatives) from each municipality.
“It worked for over a hundred years,” Coughlin added.
She says she doesn’t support the suggestion that the workload for individual councillors would double if the size of council was cut in half.
“I don’t read half an agenda, I read the whole agenda,” Coughlin said. “My workload is not going to double, but the cost to the taxpayers will be cut.”
According to a news release from the county, if the adjustment is approved, the elected mayors of the county’s 16 member municipalities will serve as the default county representatives starting the next term of county council.
As proposed previously, the appointed full-time warden will be chosen by the incoming council among eligible electors who choose to put their name forward for the position.
The triple-majority process needed for the changes to take effect includes:
- approval by county council to proceed with the changes
- holding a public meeting to consider a draft bylaw that would change the composition of county council
- if the bylaw is ultimately passed by county council, it would then be sent to the 16 lower-tier member municipalities where a majority of their councils must consent to the bylaw (the majority of municipalities consenting must also represent a majority of electors in the county).
If approved, these decisions would take effect for the 2026-30 term. The current structure will continue for the remainder of the current term.
