After months of turmoil and legal wrangling, the controversial Downtown Barrie Business Improvement Association (BIA) byelection results have been ratified by city council.
And even with the ratification vote during Monday night's virtual council meeting, there was still some fireworks during talks around the issue, which has been ongoing for months.
The Downtown Barrie BIA board, which is an arm's-length committee of council, sent a letter to the city May 1 indicating they had ratified the byelection results from several weeks ago. The six new members are Daniela Fuda, Rob Hamilton, Colin Hassey, Jason Ing, Paul Lynch, and Cait Patrick. Council approves the BIA’s budget and its elections.
Coun. Sergio Morales, who's the interim chair of the Downtown BIA, noted the byelection results were recently ratified by the BIA board of directors, but that the vote was not unanimous. He also describes the tone around the BIA board's meeting and the need to move forward with the byelection results. Signing off on the byelection would allow them to get back to business and help downtown merchants during the COVID-19 crisis.
"We are in a once-every-hundred-year global pandemic," Morales said. "Our downtown, as I've said before and it's not to be hyerbolic for us to realize, but our downtown is on figurative fire."
Morales said many businesses are being shuttered and they need to stop further closures. He said that means the BIA board needs to put aside its difference and return to getting things done.
The byelection was necessary following the resignation of six people from the board within a span of only a few days in October 2019. Following the October resignations, city council also removed the city's representatives, Couns. Clare Riepma and Keenan Aylwin, from the BIA board on Oct. 28. Morales was appointed to the board as the city's representative and interim chair.
After the byelection was conducted, concerns were raised over the use of proxy votes following a complaint from one of the candidates who alleged she didn’t know all the rules around the voting process before the Jan. 24 deadline. That's when the lawyers got involved. Lawyers for the BIA and the members-elect disagreed on the validity of the byelection.
The BIA board’s legal counsel, from Barrie-based Barriston Law, suggested the byelection results should be voided and a new one be held, while legal advice from Blaney McMurty LLP, representing the six members-elect, and lawyer Jack B. Siegel, who specializes in election and voting processes, said the results should be accepted and ratified by city council.
Morales also said on Monday night that holding another byelection would take another three to five months, during which time the BIA would operate with a "skeleton board." It could also lead to the same results, he said.
"Under very extenuating circumstances, the board decided that the ends did not justify the means," said Morales, not to mention "a lot more bickering and division in the public. That was just not acceptable. We (the BIA board) voted to ratify it and I encourage members of council to do the same, under extremely dire circumstances."
Riepma said the BIA's lawyer questioned the byelection results and he still has concerens about transparency.
"There's just a bit of a bad smell around this election and I really don't think we're doing the board any favours by ratifying this election," he said. "I don't want to be the judge of whether there was ballot stuffing or not, or there were processes that weren't done properly..."
And that point, Morales interjected with a point of order.
"The councillor who is saying he's not putting a cloud over this is literally using charged language to put a cloud over this," Morales said.
Mayor Jeff Lehman urged Riepma not to make such allegations.
"It's just that I'm concerned about this this looks to the general public and to, especially, the members of the BIA," Riepma said. "I can't support the ratification."
Aylwin, whose ward includes the downtown, said he understands the concerns around COVID-19 and the need to move forward, but he also said that's not reason in itself to ratify the byelection results. Aylwin also alluded to the BIA board's own legal advice on the matter.
"Recognizing we are in a crisis and we need to be supporting our downtown businesses, absolutely, that doesn't mean that transparency and fairness can go out the window," Aylwin said. "I think we need to tread very lightly here and act with caution."
Aylwin also noted that council asked the BIA to conduct a governance review, which has not been done, ahead of the byelection. He said BIA members need to know where the money is going and be able to have faith in the process.
Coun. Jim Harris, who was added to the BIA board as a city representative in March, said after seeing all of the legal advice, the board decided to ratify the results. He added there are also plans to proceed with governance review.
"There's a lot of good things happening," he said.
However, Harris also noted there were significant concerns around the byelection.
"There's a perception that people did something wrong here," he said. "And they didn't do something wrong; they more effectively used mechanisms (proxy voting) at their disposal during the election. And some didn't. Some feel they weren't fully advised or had an opportunity to use this mechanism."
If the proxy votes are removed, Harris said it wouldn't have changed the end result.
"We don't want to be casting shadows and negative commentary on the folks who put their name forward, went through a process and have been duly elected and are now caught in this really uncomfortable situation," said Harris, adding the "prudent thing to do would be to move forward" and deal with COVID-19 directly as it affects business.
Couns. Alywin and Riepma were the only two councillors to vote against ratifying the byelection results.
