Petrowski reinstated
Regional peers return electronic devices after accepting apology
After insisting he wouldn’t do it, St. Catharines regional Coun. Andy Petrowski has issued another apology to his fellow politicians.
On Sept. 28, Petrowski sent an email to Regional Chairman Alan Caslin apologizing for the behaviour that caused former integrity commissioner John Mascarin to rule Petrowski had breached council’s code of conduct on three occasions.
In his email, obtained by The Standard Thursday afternoon, Petrowski apologized to Pelham Mayor Dave Augustyn for calling him names and for disrupting an April Pelham town council meeting. He also had made an apology to Augustyn verbally during a September council meeting.
“I apologize to council for any untrue statements made on my personal social media account about the Islamic religion,” the email reads, referring to one of the violations of the code of conduct noted by Mascarin when he issued his findings in May.
Later Thursday night, regional council accepted Petrowski’s apology and reinstated him to committees and gave him back his regional communication devices.
Council had removed him from those committees as part of a disciplinary process. Petrowski’s electronic devices were taken away from him after he used his iPad and sent a message of a naked woman with her legs spread from his government email address to more than a hundred people in May.
Mascarin — who found Petrowski’s social media activity “puerile, disdainful, insulting, amateurish, ridiculous and odious” — recommended Petrowski apologize to council, which in turn voted to accept the recommendation.
Petrowski had intended to respond to Mascarin’s reports shortly after they were released, but instead took a short leave of absence.
In July Petrowski told CTKB 610 AM that he had no intention of apologizing to council.
Regional council voted to require Petrowski to attend sensitivity training — either clinical or religious in nature — before he would be permitted to attend committee meetings. In July, he called the demand for such training “a joke.”
However, in another email obtained by The Standard sent to council on Oct. 2, Petrowski said he has satisfied a council motion for sensitivity training by meeting with a Christian pastor.
“Improving how to communicate with others should always be a personal goal that one should strive for. To that end and based on several meetings with members (in pastoral roles) of my Christian faith community over the past few months, I advise that this pursuit of mine satisfactorily fulfils the ‘sensitivity’ motion named by council,” Petrowski wrote.
In the email, Petrowski pointed to two quotations from the New Testament that “will help guide me in all my future interactions.” The first, Matthew 7:12 includes the passage “do to others as you would have them do to you,” and the other, Luke 6:27-28 says “love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, and pray for those who mistreat you.”
Petrowski on Thursday rebuffed an interview request from The Standard.
Petrowski’s emails to council also include a justification for the more than $44,500 in legal bills he expensed to taxpayers. He wrote that those bills arose from seeking legal advice about the integrity commissioner reports and were not part of his failed legal challenge to prevent their release.
Petrowski, along with Fort Erie resident Fred Bracken, attempted to sue most of regional council to block the release of the reports. He claimed the reports violated his charter rights, but a judge threw the case out of court and ordered Petrowski and Bracken to pay Niagara Region $5,000 in legal expenses.
That money has yet to be collected by the Region.
Petrowski’s expenses — obtained by The Standard through a Freedom of Information request — show that he billed taxpayers for mileage to the Welland courthouse to file his lawsuit and to attend a hearing.
The apology to council represents the sixth time Petrowski has apologized publicly for his behaviour and is the fifth since he was elected to regional council in 2010.
To read Petrowski’s full statements to council go online to www.stcatharinestandard.ca.
— with files from
The Standard’s Bill Sawchuk glafleche@postmedia.com twitter.com/grantrants