Warden still favours status quo
When asked if he still prefers the status quo when it comes to the size of Clare’s municipal council, Warden Ronnie LeBlanc said yes.
“I feel strongly that we’ll keep the council size because of the survey and because of the support in the last public meeting,” he said. “In reality governance is a big question when it comes to council and when you look purely at governance – a council of five becomes difficult – because a quorum is three so if you have a meeting with three then you have two people who can now make decisions for the whole municipality.
“Where it becomes really difficult is at the committee level because what happens if you have say the planning committee – which is pretty controversial – right now we have three members on it – well that would be the majority of council … I’ve spoken to other councils who have five and what they do is the committee is the council – so the council acts as the planning committee… what I find it takes away is the sober second thought,” LeBlanc added. “Those are my real concerns around the five-member council. And in all fairness if you’re not involved in council you wouldn’t really get that unless you were having to do the work and feeling the public pressure. So, all in all, I’m pleased with the way it’s going.”
Warden LeBlanc was in attendance at last week’s meeting. He said he had some concerns about Gerard Theriault’s comments about his council and its committees, but chose not to speak to them. Theriault is chairperson of the Clare Civic Association.
“I don’t want to get into that, but as for the process, I’ve talked to a lot of people in the community that were at the last meeting and they felt that they were heard,” he said. “I’m quite pleased with the turnout tonight and with the consultants – they’ve done an excellent job, they’ve really dug into the numbers, really looked at the boundary scenarios – and whatever they wind up recommending I have to say they’ve done an outstanding job.”
Clare CEO Stéphane Cyr was also a participant during the Feb. 6 meeting. While LeBlanc chose not to speak to Theriault’s statements about council’s participation on committees, Cyr emailed a response to this newspaper.
“There are a number of inaccuracies/errors in Mr. Thériault’s (Clare Civic Association) written submission, not least of which is the number of committees on which council members participate,” Cyr wrote. “Mr. Thériault suggests council participation on committees is down from 22 to five and cites this as an argument for a reduction in council size.
Unfortunately, this statement is misinformed.”
Cyr attached a current listing of the 22 committees on which council participates.
“Granted, these are not all committees of council. Some are regional committees (Waste Check, WREN, Western Regional Library), others are longstanding committees dealing with issues of strategic importance to the municipality (Villa Acadienne, police advisory, doctor recruitment). All are important,” he said.
“The bylaw committee is a very active committee comprised of three councillors and staff resources (i.e. CAO and the bylaw enforcement officer). The public works committee is also comprised of three councillors plus staff resources from both our building services and public works departments.”
In response to Theriault’s charge that the municipality no longer has a communications committee, Cyr also objected.
“We also have a communications committee,” he said. “This is essentially a working committee comprised of staff only, with a goal of bettering and modernizing the municipality’s communication practices. The activities of this committee are routinely reported to council. However, since there are no councillors on the committee, it is not included on the attached list.”