The local Mayoralty Debate held on Thursday 15th 2026 at the Lions Centre. First of all a huge shoutout to the organisers, well done for the setup the moderation and the consolidation of many questions. For a ‘Town Hall’ meeting set in 2026 it performed well. Our preference for the meeting would have been different – lots of questions from the floor as opposed to canned questions, but that is not the rage these day – no wonder we at the BR get called dinosaurs.

But back to the meeting. It is obvious that each of the candidates have their approaches and themes polished and ready. Candidate Beatty stresses, her experience of two Council terms, one as Deputy Mayor (DM) and her knowledge of how things work at Town Hall. It should be noted that the actual position of DM, in this term of Council has been rendered useless in practise and only exists on paper. Previous DMs were in charge of the budget every year and were active Mayoral replacements. Neither of these roles exist anymore due to the demolition of the previous governance system by Mayor Cleveland and the Staff, and the extreme reluctance of the present Mayor to relinquish any part of the Mayor’s role to anyone else but himself. But back to her stands on things.

She is a staunch defender of the actions taken by being on the Police Services board and as a member of Town Council. She was not helped by the problems exposed in the last year of the activities, or lack of them, in the financial departments of the Town and the Cobourg Police Services Board. Both departments have been plagued by financial reporting problems attributed to previous regimes. Namely the lack of proper and timely financial reporting and the implementation of new methods and systems. Both the Town Council and the CPSB have now produced reports exposing the situations. The Town, in a report to Council in 2024, the CPSB issued a report and remedial actions in September 2026. Candidate Beatty had to defend herself against a concerted effort by Candidate Cleveland of failing in her duty by “hiding” the facts about these problems.

Candidate Cleveland, a neophyte Mayor elected by a majority of only three hundred votes last time, has made his ‘bones’ on the issue of “Safe Streets”. His heavy handed support of anything other than “Policing the Streets” is facing a mixed reaction in Cobourg. He has strictly defined and stated that the service delivery of any kind of help to the unfortunates is not a Cobourg responsibility, but a County one, this has led to a stand of being unwilling to let Cobourg be involved in methods to alleviate the problems. His slogan would appear to be “I want to help but not by providing services in Cobourg” ignoring the fact that Cobourg is the County seat and the social agencies that provide help are all in Cobourg and the great majority of the people who are unhoused and on the streets with mental health problems together with the addicts come from Cobourg. He is also proclaiming that he and he alone is “fighting to expose the ‘hidden reports'”. A problem for him as he knew where the reports were and the contents of them Two Years ago and only chose to try to expose them in the first weeks of his election campaign.

Candidate Max LeMarchant entered the race in the late in the middle of the nomination period, a late entry. His stance is simple – Cobourg needs better management, in everything not just financial reporting, and the lack of action to remedy the faults is indicative of bad management. Stressing his background and experience as a local businessman who has built a community of over a thousand homes in the West End of Town he proclaims that he knows how to do and fix things. His message is effective stating that both of the other candidates are heavily involved in the problems of the Town and he charges that as a result of the lack of actions and remedies both candidates are guilty of bad management and don’t deserve to be elected as ‘flawed’ Mayors. He has also charged that due to the lack of an updated Official Plan Cobourg is not ready for the growth that is coming. “Having a Zoning Bylaw revision before finishing the Official Plan is a backwards way of doing things”. He had to fend off an attack from Candidate Cleveland who accused him of being obstructive in the revision of the Zoning Bylaw because he had objected to the Bylaw at the OLT. He countered by explaining that the Bylaw was flawed and he had to object to correct the mistakes. “A very unnecessary expensive thing to do!”

Just our impressions of a long night and voting starts today, it will be interesting to see if the Town clerk will release the voting numbers on a daily basis.