And adopted a motion that implemented an Interim Control Bylaw (ICBL); it only took 4 hours and 27 minutes. leaving only a few of the previously full audience in the room at the end. I guess most of us had better things to do than watch a meeting, to the end, geared to the defence of the Mayor and HIS Staff. The objective of the Special Meeting was to to do four things. Educate the public because there had been comments made “Recently a candidate for Council has written a lengthy diatribe on a supportive blog attacking our Development Department (DD).” continuing in his two minute opening statement  with “we have to correct misinformation, misconstrued information, outmoded information and outdated information!” 

That correction took the form of three sections of the meeting:

• an explanation of the history of current Provincial Planning Legislation,
• a review of the Development Department’s activities since its establishment touting the accomplishments
• and a slide show consisting of, what the Mayor called ‘questions I have been asked about development’.

This dog and pony show took less than three minutes shy of two hours and then it was off to the meat of the meeting – a lengthy demonstration of confusion and apathy to the subject – the two motions about the ICBL. The first motion which was not the motion on the agenda, the Mayor by this time had had a change of mind and substituted another two motions mid-meeting was about the scope and topic of the ICBL. This motion was adopted after 43 minutes of debate. Council had to decide on the height of the buildings that should be banned and what area of the Town should be covered by it. They settled on the complete Town and any height over the limits of the Zoning Bylaw. Then they moved onto the second motion which was a directive to the Staff to take into account a recent case where Niagara on the Lake had messed up in their application of an ICBL and they had to pay $1million to an aggrieved developer (The Hummell case). Apparently the Mayor thought he could indemnify and educate the Council if the Staff drew up a list of specified areas of Municipal administration that the ICBL would cover. Explaining in his usual “I am the smartest guy in the room” tone and attitude that in his opinion that every topic to be  listed such as infrastructure, parks, etc. would need a separate study and increase costs and time, he only wanted one topic to be studied – height, massing and built form. The Deputy Mayor and Cllr. Mutton wanted to study a lot more and debate and confusion emerged again.

The confusing part of all of this was that the Mayor once he had a seconder to the second motion declared he would vote against it! Saying he only wanted this motion to show Council to know how the first motion was to be implemented and also include the problems of the Hummell case and how Cobourg could avoid that. An amendment to the motion was moved by the Deputy Mayor this produced a whole list of items to be studied. Eventually she withdrew the motion and back to the original motion. It was then defeated because The Deputy Mayor and Cllr Mutton disagreed with the idea that Council only study one aspect of the problem and ignore the rest was wrong. With the Mayor voting against his own motion it was a tied vote, Cllr Bureau, having a declared conflict of interest, was absent, and the motion was defeated. The meeting ended at approximately 5.30pm.

Now to the observations of the meeting, first of all it was the Mayor’s show and he displayed all of his usual traits –  arrogance, boredom – at one time handing over the Chair to the Deputy Mayor, mansplaining at one point and condescension (look it up here). Snide comments about the upcoming election abounded and at one point when he appeared to lose the room and descended into a reminder to Council about Edmund Burkes theory of Representative Democracy and taking bad press about his way of doing things, Cllr Barber intervened and reminded him that they all take bad press as part of the job.

During the review of the DD the Director boasted about having a full complement of planners in his department, but admitted that not one of had the necessary OPPI qualification to sign off on planning applications. It was being done by people working towards the OPPI. So we have planning applications being signed off by Apprentices! A moment appeared when the Mayor slagged off the previous Head Planner for leaving the Corporation – he had to be chastised for his opinion. Another moment that showed the lack of objectivity and personal animus was when during the segment for the DD he made comments about “One Person” who objected to the ZBL at the recent OLT. Without naming that person – who is an Mayoralty opponent Max LeMarchant, he certainly implied that it was wrong to do so and accused him of failing to work with the Staff to resolve the issues when all other objectors had done so. A low blow in a serious discussion.

Any way despite the meeting taking far too long to achieve the desired result, despite the time taken by Cllr Mutton to delve into the weeds – she was the only Cllr who really wanted to be there, Cllr Darling probed about the intricacies of the OLT and its implications on the Town, Cllr Burchat was his usual contemplative  self just listening and voting and Cllr Barber interjected twice while the Deputy Mayor filled the Mayor in with necessary corrections to his content and statements. All in all just a usual Council meeting.

But the result was a good one The Town now has an Interim Control Bylaw that delays the developments that contain proposed amendments to the ZBL that violate the height and massing requirements of the ZBL. Credit goes to all those who have spoken up in the last month – it would not have happened without you! – Thank You