Our local government has lost the moral authority to govern. It has been one thing after another for several years now. Whether council or staff, we have seen consistent displays evidencing a lack of respect towards the citizenry of this city.
We have a CAO that publicly criticized the “buffoonishness and hostility” of a member of council, and in response to a city manager asking why our elected representatives were “asking so many questions” no less. Perhaps because that is their job.
Would our staff prefer the citizens of this city to dutifully pay their taxes with no expectation of accountability as to how those funds are spent? Only the CAO was called on to issue an apology for this blatantly disrespectful display towards our local democracy, yet the apology issued merely addressed his indiscretion in allowing his comments to become public record — it did not address the disrespectful and insubordinate nature of his remarks.
We have a member of council who, following a council vote in which it was decided not to solicit the aid of Premier Doug Ford in resolving an issue, took advantage of a televised event to solicit the aid of the premier in resolving said issue. We have another member of council who routinely bans constituents who voice dissent from a social media page he runs — a page which has effectively served as a town hall of sorts for his ward.
This same member of council has also shown a great deal of disrespect to members of the public who have served on local boards alongside him, with a particular incident where he yelled at a fellow board member of the Greater Sudbury Development Corporation to “grow up” the first to come to mind.
Both of these individuals have also been accused of fomenting a hostile environment for business leaders in the city’s downtown. This is not the kind of bullish behaviour we should see from our elected officials, and it debases our democracy when they conduct themselves so poorly.
We have a mayor who has routinely silenced certain dissenting members of council, having gone so far as to have their microphones muted during council meetings. Our mayor has also, on more than one occasion, made snide remarks directed toward a specific member of council during council meetings. Further, when members of council noted the lack of certain information in a recent report, the mayor blamed them for not formally requesting that information be included in the report.
These same members had, in fact, attempted in February to request formally the information be included in the report, but the mayor had assured them at the time that it was not necessary to do so, as the information would be included.
Yet more bullish behaviour from an elected official, all for the sake of expedience at the taxpayers’ expense.
I could continue on at great length, but perhaps the most egregious example to date is one that came to light in a July 2 news story published. The story highlights how our government claims the current home of Gateway Casinos should have been taxed from 2016 through 2021 at a valuation more than 350-per-cent higher than that set by the Municipal Property Assessment Corporation.
In other words, our government is trying to extract more tax from a property owner even as it has spent nearly the entire period in question undermining the value of the same property in promoting the Kingsway Entertainment District project.
What a slap in the face to the citizens of this city that our government would spend taxpayer money just to add insult to injury like this. However, our city government has been doing this all along, and on a larger scale, as it has routinely acted in such a way as to gut our community centres.
Whether pushing for the relocation of the arena out of the downtown in favour of the KED site or seeking to close an arena in Capreol in favour of the Valley East Twin Pad project, the result is the same — the city asking taxpayers to contribute more even as the city contributes to a loss of value in local community centres.
When our government is more interested in building empires, legacies, and districts than in building communities, it should have neither our confidence nor our support. No authority is legitimate that cannot withstand scrutiny and criticism without attempting to silence, dissuade, or discredit its critics. We have a government that has repeatedly shown disdain for public opinion, having the gall to suggest that a one-question poll asking citizens if they are excited about a project qualifies as consultation.
We have a government that has seen one of its representatives refer to a dissenting expert as a “washed-up dinosaur in an ivory tower”. We have a government where even elected officials who dissent are quite literally silenced. There is no question that this is a government that has lost its moral authority to govern — the only question is if we the citizens have sufficient political will to hold our government to account. We can no longer afford to be apathetic when our communities are under attack from within our own municipality.
Al O’Neill
Resident of Ward 9