The long-simmering dysfunction of Guelph City Council finally boiled over at Monday night’s council meeting.
Long rumoured, often discussed and occasionally observed, Monday’s gong show of a meeting confirmed that this council has some issues.
It began with integrity commissioner Robert Swayze delivering his report on a complaint stemming from five councillors exiting an in-camera meeting earlier this year and anonymous comments made to a local blogger.
Then it was on like Donkey Kong.
Verbal shots fired across the horseshoe, at least three points of order called out, four councillors reading prepared statements, critical comments from the mayor that he quickly retracted and, capping it all off, an attempt by councillors Mark MacKinnon and Andy Van Hellemond to have councillor Mike Salisbury suspended without pay for 90 days.
It was quite a display.
“We are finally airing our dirty laundry in public. Maybe it’s about time that finally happened,” councillor Leanne Piper said.
“Toxic and dysfunctional,” Salisbury said in describing the atmosphere surrounding City Hall these days, quoting an e-mail he previously sent to the mayor.
“We are finally admitting to you, the public, the dysfunction of council,” councillor Karl Wettstein said.
The subject matter of the in-camera meeting in question was the hotly contested topics of Guelph Municipal Holdings Inc. and the city’s district energy initiative.
“Sooner or later the issue of GMHI and district energy on every closed meeting agenda will be known by the public and seven councillors will have a lot of explaining to do,” Bell said.
Much of the spotlight fell on Salisbury,
“It seemed like we were walking into a ‘gotcha!’ moment,” Salisbury said of the short notice of the in-camera meeting he later walked out on.
Salisbury admitted having a discussion with the local blog Guelph Politico and made several comments about City Council’s dysfunction that he claimed were off the record. But several times during the council meeting he denied being the anonymous source making the statement about city staff being “skillfully hung out to dry” that Swayze’s report felt violated the confidentiality clause of closed meetings.
After reading a long prepared statement, some councillors felt Salisbury had admitted he was the anonymous source, but he again denied it.
Salisbury later removed himself from the horseshoe, claiming conflict of interest given that he appeared to be the one considered to have made the comments.
“It wasn’t me,” Salisbury said, when asked point blank by Dan Gibson if he was the “anonymous source” that broke the rules.
Then, after council wrapped up the open portion of the meeting after almost five hours, Salisbury approached the media table and said "I guess I was" the anonymous source quoted on Guelph Politico, although it wasn't clear if he felt he did so unwittingly, was misquoted or that his comments were off the record.
The Mayor wasn’t about to miss an opportunity to get a shot in.
He said the in-camera meeting was an information session only.
“Some want that information, some don’t. Those that don’t get up and leave,” Guthrie said.
He quickly retracted the statement when a number of councillors objected in unison.
“When I go home and tonight and look in the mirror, I know I did my job and I did my job properly,” Guthrie said of how he handled that meeting.
Councillor Phil Allt called the incident the biggest political mess to hit Guelph since the Michael Sona scandal.
“Toxic game playing,” he said of the fact someone was releasing information from in-camera meetings to local bloggers.
He said there has been a “false narrative” surrounding the five councillors leaving that meeting.
What we learned about the closed meeting that led to all the furor was that it was called with short notice by Guthrie and it concerned information about Guelph Municipal Holdings Inc. and the city’s community energy initiative.
Two councillors, June Hofland and Wettstein, generally considered to be politically aligned with the five that walked out of the meeting, were away on vacation and could not attend the meeting.
The five say they left the meeting in the best interest of their constituents and, as councillor Cathy Downer put it, “protect the integrity of staff.”
“In 13 years I’ve never felt the need to leave a meeting, but I did that night,” Downer said.
At the end of the day council voted 11-1 against a motion to pursue the matter further in an attempt to identify the anonymous source.
