BarrieToday welcomes letters to the editor at [email protected]. Please include your full name, daytime phone number and address (for verification of authorship, not publication). The following letter is from Springwater Township Mayor Don Allen, who is not seeking re-election.
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During municipal election campaigns you hear many claims of what candidates will do and accomplish if elected. For incumbents seeking re-election, you hear of all the great things they accomplished in the term just ending. They all claim they are fiscally prudent with taxpayers’ money.
As outgoing mayor not seeking re-election, I want to make residents aware of an example of something that was not fiscally prudent with taxpayers’ money in Springwater in this last term.
In Springwater, there were several of these during this last term involving different councillors. The one involving me arose after a golf event in June 2019. Three councillors each filed code of conduct complaints, claiming the way I behaved at the event lacked proper decorum. None of them attended the event and they filed these complaints based on information they heard from some golf course employees.
None of these councillors ever spoke to me about this before they filed the complaints, nor during the investigations at any time. If they had, I could have shared with them what happened as well as a fact which I have kept a private matter – that I have multiple sclerosis and that, along with my double knee replacements, makes me somewhat unstable after a day of exercise in the heat.
My first contact with the police after these complaints was 16 days after the event. They determined, based on what they heard, to charge me and these charges were later dropped and replaced with a careless driving fine under the Highway Traffic Act for driving at night with my daytime running lights on.
The township’s integrity commissioner performed an investigation and concluded there should be no further sanctions against me based on the investigation. The majority of council — with myself not voting due to conflict — did not accept the report and one councillor made a motion to suspend my pay for 90 days, notwithstanding what the report concluded.
This motion had to be retracted and deferred once it was realized this could not be done based on the conclusions of the integrity commissioner investigation. Council also decided to seek a new integrity commissioner and retained Mr. Robert Swayze. Mr. Swayze reviewed the previous integrity commissioner’s investigation report and concurred there were no findings that I contravened the code of conduct.
The majority of council voted to retain another integrity commissioner to do another investigation over and above the two who had concluded there was no contravention. Harold Elston was retained by the majority of councillors — myself excluded — to do another extensive investigation and he concluded the statements from the golf course employees were inconsistent and could not be relied on and rejected them. He also dismissed the code of conduct complaints filed by the councillors, as there was no breach of the code of conduct be me.
This exercise of three integrity commissioners over two years cost the taxpayers nearly $90,000 in professional fees and staff time dealing with this, plus significant stress and strain and financial cost to my wife and me.
Another key item to assess before voting is whether you think a candidate could work with council and staff to build a positive and motivating working environment. During this last term in Springwater between some council members and staff there was tension, mistrust and conflict, and this led to considerable stress for staff.
Much time, effort and money were spent assembling a great team of staff. If incumbent councillors are successful for the positions they are seeking, I fear there will be a significant exodus of good talent we have as staff, as staff will not want to continue with the stressful situation that existed for the past four years.
Please take time to assess the candidates carefully and make sure you vote.
Don Allen
Springwater Township
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