BarrieToday welcomes letters to the editor at [email protected]. Please include your daytime phone number and address (for verification of authorship, not publication). The following letter is in response to a story titled 'Oro-Medonte council opts not to reprimand Keane, then fires integrity commish' published on May 26.
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What was actually resolved at (Wednesday's) council meeting?
The May 26 Oro-Medonte council meeting was a total farce and a parody of a kangaroo court wherein, sham (legal) proceedings are set up in order to give the impression of a fair (legal) process, but in fact offer no impartial justice as the verdict is decided in advance.
What's outrageous in this case is that the accused had already been determined guilty of breaching the code of conduct by an objective third party hired by the council, but because certain and obvious council members, including the mayor, did not like that verdict they conducted an insulting and pre-staged act to convince residents that the accused party (Coun. Cathy Keane) was just "doing her job!"
The council's role which was intentionally lost in this masquerade, was to determine if they accept the integrity commissioner report and, if so, an appropriate consequence for Cathy Keane's unethical actions.
Instead of objectively allowing fair and justified questions and discussion by other councillors, the mayor in a dictatorial manner allowed certain councillors to create a smoke screen by challenging the integrity of both the integrity commissioner and the Horseshoe Valley Property Owners Association (HPVOA) through their lengthy and irrelevant speeches.
It was naturally expected that many questions would arise but one that was not asked was the role of the mayor in this fiasco. Of course, if that question was asked, it would undoubtedly have been ruled out-of-order by the mayor. After all, the integrity commissioner's report stated the mayor's son forwarded an email about the HVPOA meeting (with sign-in information) to the mayor, who then forwarded it to Keane, triggering this whole disgusting mess.
The whole exercise made a farce of the intention to uphold the integrity of council's collective integrity by rejecting the unacceptable breach of the Code of Conduct by Cathy Keane.
This council was again split and muddled in arriving at any decision, in no small part because of the ineffectiveness of the meeting chair. Thank goodness for the clerk who actually listens. Can't wait for the election to hopefully clear out this den of deception.
As a surprise ending and final blow, Coun. DeSousa made a motion which passed to fire the integrity commissioner and Keane voted on this motion — stunning.
Allan Baker
Oro-Medonte Township
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