Moments after receiving a slate of ‘strong mayor’ powers from the province on Saturday, Mayor Cam Guthrie relinquished a few of them … at least for now.
In notices posted to the city’s website – a page was set up specifically to list decisions and directions under the strong mayor legislation – Guthrie delegated authorization to reorganize city departments to the CAO, with council granted the ability to hire and/or fire the CAO, appoint chairs and vice-chairs to council committees, as well as to assign duties to those committees.
“It’s important to continue the collaborative efforts of all members of council alongside the professional advice and guidance offered by city staff,” Guthrie said in a news release issued Friday to announce the new web page.
“We know that our community values transparency, we’ve heard this loud and clear,” said CAO Scott Stewart in the release. “Transparency will be paramount to trust in government while operating with these new powers for the head of council.”
Guelph is one of 26 municipalities to see strong mayor power granted through the provincial legislation on July 1, following last fall’s endorsement of the same for Toronto and Ottawa.
As a result of the legislation, mayors of the identified municipalities have the ability to veto council-approved bylaws if they are contrary to provincial priorities (or the mayor believes they may be), propose municipal budgets and/or amendments, and bring new matters forward for council’s consideration.
Council can override the mayor's veto of bylaws and/or budget amendments with a two-thirds majority vote, which in the case of Guelph means nine councillors.
Guthrie announced during last week’s council meeting his intent to relinquish the then-pending powers that he can, but the rest remain the mayor's legislated responsibility.
However, as staff noted later in that meeting, Guthrie isn’t bound by that decision – he can modify or revoke the order at his discretion – and any future mayor will automatically receive those powers; it would be up to them to decide if they’d like to also relinquish those legislatively provided abilities.
