Kate Leatherbarrow has shared the findings of the Woodstock integrity commissioner after Woodstock City council appointed Todd Poetter to a vacant seat.
EDITOR'S NOTE: This Article has been updated after erroneously reporting council broke the procedural by-law. Heart FM apologizes for any confusion.
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It appears Woodstock City council departed from the process outlined in the Procedural By-law when they appointed Todd Poetter to council, following the passing of Ron Fraser.
This is according to the finding of Woodstock's Integrity Commissioner Gregory F. Stewart. A departure from the by-law is different from breaking the by-law so Woodstock City council did not break any rules in appointing Councillor Poetter. In his findings Stewart did say that council did not break any rules in appointing Poetter.
"The question of whether members of the public agree with the procedure chosen by council, or like the result, is not a question for me to determine. Regardless of how some may feel about it, when council made this appointment to fill the vacancy, they did so in compliance of the requirements under the Municipal Act and within their authority and obligations under the Procedural By-law."
The options that were presented to council at the Woodstock City council meeting were as follows.
1. The position is to be offered to the candidate who was the runner up in the last municipal election provided that candidate received a number of votes greater than 50% of the number of votes achieved by the candidate directly ahead of him or her. (It is to be noted that Ms. Leatherbarrow meets that criteria).
2. If the position is not filled by the first step, then advertisements are to be sent out requesting letters of interest. The identity of the applicants is to be made public and the applicants are to be reviewed in a Closed Session. A narrowed number are to be asked to make verbal presentations to Council. The Council will then select the replacement in Closed Session.
3. If no candidate is appointed under the Application Process, a By-Election is to be held.
Council does have the option to add other options if they get 2/3 of the vote. That is what happened in this case as every member of council agreed to add a fourth option of appointing Todd Poetter.
This went against the City Staff recommendation which was option to appoint the runner up in the previous election. This would have been Kate Leatherbarrow, who only lost by 59 votes in the 2018 election. Leatherbarrow has been a vocal critic of council and felt like they did not appoint her, because they simply did not like her. This created a huge outcry in the City and the decision got a lot of pushback from residents. Many felt, council was afraid to have someone who might bring a different opinion to that seat. You can read more about how the decision was made by council last year online here.
Leatherbarrow sought legal council and requested the investigation from the Integrity Commissioner. The Integrity commissioner found that it appears that council departed from the process outlined in the Procedural By-law in appointing Poetter.
Leatherbarrow says the lack of process in which the vacant seat was filled is a poor display of leadership.
"At a time when our community is looking for strong and honest leadership, I have deep concerns surrounding the decisions Woodstock City Council makes on behalf of this community. I have deep concerns with how they blatantly break their own rules. There were viable options on the table to honour the democratic process and include public input, all of which I believe this community deserves. Instead they internally made a decision to pick a pal they liked most, and pick someone who did not run in the last municipal election."
Woodstock City council stated at the time the reason they appointed Poetter was because he would not require any training for the job. This happened during a lockdown period of the pandemic and any training would have been lengthy and difficult over zoom.
The integrity commissioner did confirm that there was no closed door sessions.
"Accordingly, after reviewing the relevant documents and considering the comments from the City Clerk, there does not appear to be any evidence that the appointment of Mr. Poetter to fill the Council position was discussed in a Closed Session of Council."
Heart FM did reach out to Mayor Trevor Birtch for comment and will update this story if he gets back to us.
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