He wasted his time! Just watched the latest Cobourg Council Meeting held December 1^st . That’s nearly three hours of my life I won’t get back. I say this as a dispassionate watcher of many Council Meetings and my hat goes off to the Councillors who actually attended this meeting. Total waste of their time and ours for watching.

The meeting was called by Cobourg Council to hear a presentation by the Chief of Police who explained the rationale for a requested 20% increase in the Cobourg Police Services (CPS) for the next year. The meeting ran for 2hours and 41 minutes watch it here . The last slide of the PowerPoint presentation appeared at 1 hour 30 minutes. The long presentation was made longer by the way the presentation occurred. Instead of just reading the slides and then taking questions the Chief was taking questions as he went through the slides. At the 1hour 59 minute point the Chief left the podium and Council then debated why the Police Budget document was not before them.

The Mayor then proceeded to explain the budget process as he saw it. In a tone that resembled ‘mansplaining” (slang: For a man to explain something to someone, usually a woman, in a condescending manner.) he explained that there is no Police Budget to look at as he hasn’t either received it or if he has, he hasn’t released it. Under the SMPs he demanded that the budget documents from the Municipality, the Library and the Police come to him so that he can set the overall budget. He hasn’t released his budget yet.

Council then got into a back and forth about the Mayor’s budget and the Staff budget. The Mayor says there is no such thing as a Staff budget just Staff estimates. But up pops the Deputy Mayor recalling that back in October when the Mayor’s SMPs were being developed Council passed a motion directing the Staff to submit a budget to Council. “So we have two budgets – a Mayors budget and a Staff budget to look as a Council.” The Mayor then threw a tantrum because he thought that the Deputy Mayor was presenting inaccurate information and handed the Chair over to Cllr Darling.

The debate then became one of a date setting process; “when was Council going to discuss the budget?” Under the new Municipal Act the Council has 30 days to settle the budget. But the countdown starts from the time that the Mayor presents his budget. So with two budgets to look at – the Staff budget mandated by the October motion and the Mayor’s budget presented whenever he moves it, but no later than February the Councillors had a tough time deciding when to meet and give the public the time to discuss it. Finally Cllr Bureau withdrew his motion to set a date and then they all went home. But not before Cllr Barber expressed his indignation that the date-setting should have been done in closed session – he did not explain his reasoning and those remarks sparked a rebuttal from Cllr Mutton who disagreed vehemently with Cllr Barber and his remarks.

Just as the BurdReport went to press this post appeared on social media – interesting the saga continues! 

Looking at the agenda it is a closed meeting to discuss a confidential personnel report. Anybody taking bets on the Chief just saying “Up yours!”