It’s been about half a year since the Mayor of Cobourg has grabbed hold of his Strong Mayor Powers (SMP) with both hands and never let go.

The Toronto Star has published an exhaustive report (read it here) (if the article is behind a paywall click here) on how the SMPs have been used by Mayors across the Province and in doing so has developed an online tool where one can examine every edict issued by any Mayor since the powers were given. The most salient point here is that he is in the top percentile of usage in the Province!

It is fair to ask have they been used wisely and to the benefit of the Citizens?Looking at the screenshot here we have the number of times the Mayor has used the powers and how. He has used them 31 times but only 12 of them counted as real. So perhaps he does not know how to use them properly!

So what has been the effect of his edicts? One has to have been the decision to elevate his Assistant in the Mayor’s office to the level  of a Director to head the newly established “Development Dept.” How has that gone? Well it seems that Cobourg still has problems with staffing the Department with five positions in the Planning Section unfilled and the need for a new Building Inspector.

In the big picture the ability of the Mayor to hire and fire Senior Staff is doing nothing for stability and morale, and it shows with the lack of continuity in action plan action. To get an idea of the way the Town is progressing in its action plans we visited the webpage dedicated to them here If anybody can get through the gobbledy-gook and bureaucratese that some consultant has prepared please explain it to us. When one does figure out what the page means you get explanations like “Status: On-track to meet goal. Working with software developer to investigate changes to clearly report this metric.” 

But back to the Mayor’s edicts, the one substantive edict was the instruction to get going on developing the “Tannery Lands”. This one will be a goody, because it is absolutely essential for the supply of housing (the main reason given by the Premier for the SMPs) and if done right will mean that the ongoing talks with developers will lead to a proposal just in time for the election.

We at the BurdReport can only hope that the nonsense behind and in the implementation of the SMPs is severely curtailed by the new Mayor who hopefully will delegate the powers back to Council.