The city's governance system was almost thrown into disarray by a surprise vote at Guelph City Council Tuesday night.
Council was voting on a recommendation to keep the current Committee of the Whole structure in place, a recommendation that was supported 12-0 in a previous vote.
But what seemed like a done deal took a dramatic shift when Tuesday's council vote was 6-5 to reject the CoW governance model.
Some members of council, including the mayor, felt the vote was engineered by those opposed to CoW when they realized pro-CoW councillors Cathy Downer and Andy Van Hellemond weren't at the meeting, in essence giving them a one-night majority.
"I do not accept that these types of votes are surprises. It seems very well planned out to me in advance of the meetings, which is their prerogative to do that," Mayor Cam Guthrie said in a follow-up interview.
"They saw the absence of Coun. Downer and Coun. Van Hellemond and they tried to make a move that suits them," Guthrie said.
Voting against the motion were councillors Phil Allt, James Gordon, June Hofland, Mike Salisbury, Leanne Piper and Karl Wettstein.
Pro-CoW councillor Dan Gibson said he saw opponents of the CoW system making hand gestures to one another around the horseshoe once they realized Downer and Van Hellemond weren't there to vote.
"That was potentially a really embarrassing decision for our city," Gibson said in a follow-up interview.
"To simply vote against it and drive us into chaos was reckless ... it would have been a complete disaster."
After consulting with city staff and being told that the move would create huge practical, systematic and bureaucratic nightmares for city staff, council chose to revisit the vote from 15 minutes earlier and this time voted in favour of maintaining the current system with a review to come in six months.
Opponents of CoW structure feel it results in confusion regarding the decision making process, redundancy in the process, makes it difficult for citizens to attend meetings and the system for who chairs the CoW meetings is questionable.
"I was never really happy with Committee of the Whole and I was prepared to hold my nose and let it go through, but it became quite clear that there are some real flaws with Committee of the Whole process," said Allt.
"We're hearing from people that people are confused about decision making. They think Committee of the Whole and council are the same thing."
Gordon said the 6-5 vote "did send a very strong signal" that there are concerns with the CoW system "and that was my personal goal."
He said the second vote was maintaining the democratic process until the whole thing can be reassessed.
"I've had lots of concerns," Hofland said. "I wanted to build consensus (at the 12-0 vote) but when the original Committee of the Whole came forward I did not vote for it and I gave a vast list of reasons why... I feel we are failing good governance.
"The community is missing out on this new process because they don't understand it," Hofland said.
Those that support CoW feel it streamlines how the city is run, saves the city money and allows citizens two opportunities to delegate to all of council.
The Mayor said the CoW structure is working "very well" and that many other municipalities have or will be moving to a similar structure.
He felt the initial 6-5 vote was done without the six councillors taking into consideration the huge impact it would have on the everyday business of the city and was also done without consultation with other councillors or city staff.
Council switched to the new system six months ago from a system that had several committees.
Pro CoW councillor Mark MacKinnon said the move was "very irresponsible" and he was glad cooler heads prevailed.
"I was totally stunned that any council would act with such little foresight," MacKinnon said.
Coun. Piper, who initiated Tuesday's turn of events by asking that the clauses of the motion be separated for voting, was not at the May 1 meeting that saw the 12-0 vote in favour of CoW.
She explained Tuesday that she was just being consistent, having been opposed to it all along.
