Council Will Decide Mayor

Wednesday, 9 April 2014 at 14:35

Tillsonburg Mayor John Lessif announced last Friday that he will be resigning effective April 30, 2014.

Town of Tillsonburg has been in similar position before.

TILLSONBURG -- A report to be presented at Tillsonburg Town Council next Monday hopes to give a clear direction on selecting the town's next mayor after John Lessif announced he'd be resigning as mayor at the end of the month.

Lessif announced Friday that he would be stepping down from his position as Mayor at the end of the month -- citing "personal reasons related to his family."

Donna Wilson, Municipal Clerk for Tillsonburg says her report will outline the protocol for declaring the mayor's chair vacant while providing the next steps to follow going forward.

"Council would then have 60 days to fill the position under the municipal act," Wilson confirmed. "There are a number of ways that they could do that, but it's totally up to council how they fill that seat. They can also fill that seat the same night they declare it vacant."

Wilson said the next mayor of Tillsonburg will be referred to as "Mayor" for the remainder of term and not have an interim tag associated with the position while adding the selection of a new mayor isn't as simple as putting the deputy mayor in charge until election time later this fall.

"It would be my interpretation that the deputy mayor would not automatically take that seat, but that council would have to appoint somebody for that meeting to take that seat and that would be done at the opening of the council meeting."

Wilson says this type of occurrence is not a new one for the town. She says back in 2000, then Mayor Cam McKnight provided his resignation which led to a special vote for a successor.

"Council held a special meeting on May 25, 2000 and asked council for nominations for the position of mayor. Two names were nominated and council was then asked to vote and the vote ended in a tie."

After a recess, the town clerk at the time put forward a recommendation to put both names in a box and simply draw them to select the new mayor.

The winner was Brenda Carroll who served until the October election of that year.

Wilson says she hopes the selection of the next town mayor doesn't have to be settled in a similar fashion this time around.

The April 14 Tillsonburg Town Council meeting is scheduled to begin at 4:30pm, rather than the usual 6:00pm start time.