Mayor barred from city hall after hours
SARNIA, ONT .• Mike Bradley, the embattled mayor of this western Ontario town, has taken another blow in the wake of the recently released findings of a workplace harassment investigation into his treatment of four senior city hall staffers.
Bradley, the province’s second-longest serving mayor in office now, has now been stripped of his privilege to enter Sarnia city hall after hours.
He made the discovery Saturday morning when he tried to use his access card to meet a group of citizens and a visiting Norwegian teacher so the teacher could sign the city’s guest book.
“To restrict the publicly elected mayor’s access to city hall is demeaning and does not serve the public interest,” Bradley, who declined to comment in person, wrote in an email to the media Tuesday. “It shows a total lack of understanding of the demands on the mayor’s office and suggests the mayor should be just another civil servant with a set schedule,” he added.
Well known for working around the clock, Bradley often spends his weekends responding to time-sensitive issues, researching and writing from his city hall office.
He is now restricted to using his office between 8:30 a. m. and 5 p. m. Monday to Friday, the same as the other eight members of council.
City council decided behind closed doors Oct. 6 to take away Bradley’s afterhours privilege as part of its review of a workplace harassment report examining his behaviour.
That report, by a Mississauga, Ont.- based law firm, found Bradley harassed and bullied city manager Marg Misek- Evans, former city clerk Nancy Wright- Laking, former planning director Jane Cooper and former parks and recreation director Beth Gignac.
Those findings, released last Friday, came less than four months after city integrity commissioner Robert Swayze found Bradley had verbally abused and bullied Cooper and Wright- Laking. As a result of the June report, council suspended Bradley’s pay for 90 days, which he says cost him about $14,000.
Coun. Brian White said council moved to restrict the mayor’s after- hours access after the latest investigation found he breached the city’s workplace harassment policy and Ontario’s workplace safety law.
“We can’t provide a safe and harassment- free workplace after hours during those extensive working hours for our staff if we know a person who has been found to be in breach of the law is accessing the building at the same time,” said White, who chaired the Oct. 6 meeting.
But another politician, Coun. Dave Boushy, said Bradley has already apologized for his behaviour and council’s move to keep him out of his office after hours amounts to harassment.
“A lot of people are saying to me, ‘ You know what? I wonder who’s being harassed,’ ” Boushy said.