Perhaps he never had one! These six people put the boots to the Mayor’s “Campaigning from the Chair”. Regular readers will recall the Mayor had placed three “Notices of Motion” on the agenda of the August 26th Summer Council Meeting we wrote about it here.  At that meeting, which was another Summer marathon, nine hours long, he failed to get anybody on “HIS” Council to second any of the two motions presented and knowing he would not get a seconder for the third he withdrew it. 

As written by Cecilia Naismith we know what happened – “Mayor Lucas Cleveland stood alone with two notices of motion at Wednesday’s council meeting – forced to make the motion himself for lack of any other councillor doing so, then watching them set aside when there was no seconder. A third notice of motion was quietly dropped. It was on the agenda as originally published but, when council was forced to adjourn for a previously scheduled planning meeting and then readjourned afterwards, the third notice of motion was no longer on the post-adjournment agenda.” The video of the meeting shows the action watch from the 1.56 minute mark here.

This action at the Council Meeting should be the defining moment of the Mayoralty campaign, because it blows apart one of the major campaign promises of the last campaign. Wherein candidate Cleveland proudly declared that “he has been a leader of men with ten years in the Oilfields and knows how to build teams.”

After three and three-quarter years of being the Head of Council we now see that that declaration has failed. Common principles of leadership include: leading by example, effective communication, adaptability, and fostering trust within a team. This failure to get a seconder for these motions is obviously a breakdown in all of those objectives. It is not surprising really, we hear that members of Council only hear from the Mayor by email not personal conversations.

It is ironic that teamwork is written on his election signs – we ask where is the team, certainly not on this Council!