Fighting for his colleague’s reputation, Ward 3 Coun. Gerry Montpellier urged city council to launch an investigation into the allegations made against Ward 2 Coun. Michael Vagnini.
At issue is a Feb. 8 vote of city council to remove Vagnini from the Greater Sudbury Police Service Board, which passed by a vote of 9-2 and which Montpellier deems unjust. In response, Montpellier presented a motion during tonight’s meeting to direct staff to “initiate a third-party investigation of the allegations” that resulted in the vote.
Led by an impassioned speech by Ward 10 Coun. Fern Cormier, city council shot down the motion tonight with a decisive vote of 8-2.
“There’s no need to have some big conspiracy to make that kind of decision,” Cormier said. “It’s much more clear-cut than some would have us believe.”
There’s an “obfuscation and muddying of the waters” and conflation of facts within Montpellier’s motion that makes its defeat a foregone conclusion, he said.
“From a technical perspective, council has the absolute authority to make certain appointments, council has the absolute authority to revoke those appointments.”
In an email to his colleagues on council prior to tonight’s meeting, Montpellier chastised them for removing Vagnini from the police board “without any evidence, charges or cause, strictly on questionable hearsay and fabrication.”
Montpellier decried Vagnini’s removal from the police board as an “unwarranted attack on his character, causing himself and his family unrepairable professional harm.”
Although Montpellier drew a direct line between the 9-2 vote of city council to remove Vagnini from the police board and Ward 11 Coun. Bill Leduc’s accusation Vagnini threatened his life, the motion to have Vagnini removed from the board predates the alleged threat.
The threat allegedly came during a phone call that took place immediately after the Jan. 25 meeting at which Leduc initially tabled the motion to have Vagnini removed from the police board. North Bay Police Service has already undertaken a third-party investigation of this allegation and determined there were “insufficient grounds” to proceed with charges.
Leduc’s motion to have Vagnini removed from the police board was introduced in reaction to a story Vagnini shared during the Jan. 18 finance and administration committee meeting, which went as follows:
“There’s one big large tent where I was (at Memorial Park) on Saturday night, and there was about eight gentlemen in the tent and they were yelling at an individual woman, and she got out of the tent and ran for her life when other two people from the shelter tried to get her to come back into the shelter and she just kept running.”
Although Vagnini has since said his story has been blown out of proportion and that the woman was never in any real danger, Leduc said it was obvious he should have phoned 911.
While this was the chief rational Leduc cited in his motion to have Vagnini removed from the police board, Leduc said Vagnini’s mistaken belief that he was not allowed to phone 911 due to his being on the police board and accusations Vagnini spread misinformation about Memorial Park also likely factored into councillors’ decisions.
The allegation Vagnini spread misinformation was raised again tonight in the preamble to Montpellier’s motion, which described the Jan. 18 finance and administration committee meeting as “a set-up to blindside and entrap Councillor Vagnini regarding the homeless situation at Memorial Park.”
The meeting in question saw Leduc question city administration on several points raised in a YouTube video that Vagnini posted online, which also featured anticipated mayoral candidate Bob Johnston and a homeless man who went by “Roger.”
In the video, posted on Jan. 15, it’s claimed that:
- Two frozen bodies were pulled out of downtown tents two to three weeks ago.
- A woman froze to death in a tent outside of Tom Davies Square last Thursday.
- There was a double stabbing at a shelter in the city recently.
- The city has been evicting people from their tents.
- There’s $300 million “sitting there” in a city bank ready to be used to aid in the city’s homelessness crisis.
All of these claims were refuted by city staff when Leduc questioned them on these points during the Jan. 18 meeting.
Every member of council will have had different reasons to vote as they did when it came to removing Vagnini from the police board, Cormier said, clarifying that his key reason for wanting him off of the board was his wilful spreading of misinformation.
“My biggest issue was the fact that false information was circulated through his Facebook page as an elected official, and when he found out that information was false he didn’t remove it, he didn’t take the opportunity in this chamber to correct it,” Cormier said. “He had an obligation to do that.”
The YouTube video in question remains online and has received 3,068 views as of tonight. Vagnini has declined to distance himself from the video and defended it in a recent conversation with Sudbury.com as a means of sharing what he has heard from people in Memorial Park.
Describing the situation before council as “ridiculous,” Cormier criticized some for being unable to “grow up and live up to the oaths of office that we took.”
“I’m not saying it’s going to be Kumbaya all the time, but for God’s sake, you got an issue with a colleague, go into the councillors’ lounge, have a chat. Go up to our office on the fourth floor and have a yell, yell it out. I don’t care, but to play it out through the press and in this chamber, it does none of us any good, it does our city no good, it does the institution that we’re here to represent no good.”
The only councillor to support Montpellier’s motion tonight was Ward 1 Coun. Mark Signoretti, with the balance of council voting it down. Missing from tonight’s meeting was Ward 4 Coun. Geoff McCausland and Mayor Brian Bigger.
Vagnini declared a conflict of interest for this matter so did not weigh in on tonight’s discussion. He attended the meeting virtually and disappeared from the balance of the night’s proceedings.
Tyler Clarke covers city hall and political affairs for Sudbury.com.
