Final decision coming on code of conduct penalties against Pelham mayor
Pelham council will decide Monday night on laying a penalty against Mayor Marvin Junkin following reports from the Ontario Ombudsman and an integrity commissioner, both saying he broke rules.
An investigation conducted by Michael Maynard, a mediator, arbitrator and investigator at ADR Chambers Inc., said the mayor made three breaches of the town’s code of conduct during a process that started in early 2020.
His report, as well as one from the Ontario Ombudsman’s office on the same matter, were both on Monday night’s council agenda.
The violations involve how a $25,000 donation was solicited from local business Cannabis Co., which was to go toward improvements at the community bandshell at Peace Park.
In an email sent Jan. 9 to three members of council, including complainant and Ward 2 Coun. Ron Kore, the mayor wrote “because this discussion does not fit the criteria, it cannot be discussed in-camera.” He also wrote that he and chief administrative officer David Cribbs decided “that perhaps we really wouldn’t want to discuss this in open session, so just this once we would make a decision by email, outside of council.”
In evidence provided in the integrity commissioner report, the mayor told councillors that if they decide to communicate by email to discuss the donation, “so be it” and that he doesn’t “want to know about it,” adding the donation would be paid to the bandshell committee, which would in turn be used to pay back money loaned to it by the municipality.
The first breach of the code, wrote Maynard, relates to a section that requires council members to “seek to advance the public interest with honesty.”
Whatever Junkin’s underlying rationale may have been, “it is clear that he intended to keep the notion that council ought to consider” the company’s potential donation to the bandshell committee’s project “off the public agenda and away from public scrutiny,” said Maynard.
Maynard said Junkin violated another section that says council members must “refrain from making statements the member knows or ought reasonably to know to be false or with the intent to mislead council or the public.”
Maynard wrote that a “change in language” used by the mayor in emails to councillors, on a balance of probabilities, was “more likely to have been an attempt to recover from an illconceived decision to potentially conceal the matter from the public, than it was a simple rephrasing of his true intentions which had been disclosed in a detailed email to his fellow councillors two days prior.”
Junkin also slipped up by appearing to directly solicit funds for charitable purposes. Maynard said members should “remain at arm’s-length from financial aspects of external events which they support in their public capacity.”
Ontario Ombudsman Paul Dubé also said Pelham council broke the rules through Junkin’s actions on the matter.
“The Town of Pelham acted without legal authority when it decided to inform the bandshell committee that it was not in favour of accepting a potential donation from a cannabis company. By failing to act through resolution and confirming bylaw passed at a properly constituted council meeting, the municipality tried to shield its decision-making process from public scrutiny,” said the ombudsman’s report.
The integrity commissioner said council has two options: to reprimand Junkin, or to suspend his remuneration for up to 90 days.
The ombudsman also offers two recommendations, that members of council “be vigilant in adhering to their individual and collective obligations to ensure that council complies with its responsibilities under the Municipal Act,” and that the municipality ensures that it “exercises its power and authority through a properly passed resolution and confirming municipal bylaw as required by the Municipal Act.”