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Debate continues in Centre Wellington over recent township decisions

Some councillors are calling the move to delegate power to the CAO as unnecessary and want to revisit the 2020 budget
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Centre Wellington councillor Bob Foster at Belsyde Cemetery in Fergus near his father's headstone. Foster said capital projects like work at the cemetery should be reconsidered because of COVID-19. Keegan Kozolanka/GuelphToday

CENTRE WELLINGTON – The decision to delegate “extraordinary powers” to CAO Andy Goldie has continued to come under fire by some Centre Wellington councillors.

There are also calls to revisit the 2020 budget.

At an April 6 council meeting, council approved a bylaw giving Goldie the power to act on the township’s behalf in an emergency situation if council was unable to meet. The vote ended up being a close 4-3. 

Councilor Bob Foster was a vocal critic of this and made a motion for weekly meetings and to revisit the 2020 budget. Mayor Kelly Linton ruled this out of order. 

“When you pass the budget, you expect a certain amount of revenue, $15 million in taxation total,” Foster said. “If you’re going to lose revenue, you must re-do your budget.”

Foster said the budget needs a close examination because of the pandemic. He used recent work on Belsyde Cemetery in Fergus–a project he has had long standing issues with– as an example of a project that should have been looked at. 

“We need to reconsider all spending in light of COVID-19 because there’s a huge impact on our revenue,” Foster said. “If you have a huge impact on the money coming in, you have to look at the money going out, you just have to.”

Mayor Kelly Linton said COVID-19 will impact the 2021 budget more so than this year’s. 

“The township will have to assess the impacts of COVID-19 on our financial situation, but there is no need to re-open the entire budget,” Linton said by email. “It will be more important to start deliberating on our 2021 budget. That will start later this year.”

Councillor Stephen Kitras also takes issue with delegating power to the CAO. He said he felt there wasn’t enough presented information provided to make an informed decision. Other municipalities throughout Ontario and in the county have not delegated this power. 

“If everyone had known that all the other municipalities in the county didn’t do this CAO thing, that would have been significant information to know,” Kitras said. “I feel very strongly that at the next meeting we should just go back to regular meetings and the CAO should just relinquish those powers.”

As the owner of a glass blowing business, Kitras said he had to revisit his budget and doesn’t see why the town isn’t looking at readjusting some capital projects.

“Just to go forward and not even to discuss it with the elected representatives, I don’t think that’s wise,” Kitras said. “We should be looking at that.”

Councillor Steven VanLeeuwen said he’s surprised to see councillors referring to delegating the CAO powers as a blank cheque. He compared the CAO powers as giving someone house sitting for you while on vacation a signed cheque to use in an emergency.

“If you sign the cheque and say only to be used for groceries, if the roof leaks … and those are all notes on the cheque, can it really be called a blank cheque anymore?” VanLeeuwen asked. “There’s nothing blank about it because there’s all these notes on the side which immediately takes away the idea of blank.”

VanLeeuwen said  if the budget is revisited, it can’t be a reactionary measure. 

“It’s not that we scrap the 2020 budget but we may want to look at some projects,” VanLeeuwen said. “It’s something we’ll want to do on an informed basis.”

VanLeeuwen compared the town budget to running a household. He explained there are always things to spend money on that aren’t negotiable like groceries, but cuts must be carefully considered.

“That means we need to do a process to it, not a reactionary,” VanLeeuwen said. “If we don’t take a smart process to it we’re just going to be reacting, panicking.”

Foster stressed the need for more council meetings for increased discussion to talk about these things in a public setting. At the last council meeting, he and Kitras put forward motions for weekly meetings which were ruled out of order by the mayor. 

“We pushed for meetings and if we had meetings we could be talking about these things,” Foster said. “We’re not having meetings regularly, we gave our power to the CAO.”

The Township of Centre Wellington’s next council meeting is May 4. 


Keegan Kozolanka

About the Author: Keegan Kozolanka

Keegan Kozolanka is a general assignment reporter for EloraFergusToday, covering Wellington County. Keegan has been working with Village Media for more than two years and helped launch EloraFergusToday in 2021.
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