When someone leaves a position of significant influence after a dozen years and has something to say, a parting message, it’s usually worth hearing.
Such is the case with Jeff Lehman, who took the mayor’s chair for the last time at the Nov. 7 Barrie city council meeting.
Lehman has been mayor since 2010, a city councillor for four years before that, so he spoke from experience — although just 34 when he first took the big chair.
Lehman didn’t want to talk about property taxes or police budgets or snow plowing or city parks and beaches — or at least not at length — when he had the council chamber audience’s attention that night.
He instead spoke of how we treat each other, how we connect, how we speak to each other and the consequences.
“You know, the way that we talk to each other is 'judgier' and uglier than it’s even been,” Lehman said. “And now I think too often we spend hours scrolling on our phones that we could spend talking or playing or building.
“And we consume information through algorithms that are just designed to keep us scrolling longer.”
An algorithm, according to the CBC (which I help fund, so I can use its information), is a set of instructions that determine how your computer software behaves. On social media platforms, the algorithm determines which posts you see and in which order, along with deciding which posts you don’t see.
Lehman had this to say about that.
“When we let an algorithm make up our mind for us what’s important, we surrender the most basic and important freedom of all, deciding ourselves what’s important in life,” he said.
Then Lehman, like all good speakers, took his message to a place the audience knew.
“Think of your happiest moment, think of who was there, where you were, what was going on, what was around you, maybe the moment you felt your greatest accomplishment,” he said. “I don’t know what that moment was, but I guarantee you weren’t on your phone in that moment.”
As he leaves office, Lehman said he is greatly concerned about how we will get our information, and our direction, in the future.
“These sort of online echo chambers that we live in are driving polarization on a level that is the biggest threat to collective action we’ve ever seen and, of course, the pandemic only accelerated that move online and isolated us further,” he said. “So here’s the reason I say this tonight … the antidote to that polarization and the isolation that feeds it is connection.”
Lehman says municipal government has the most direct ability to build connection among people, and that’s important for economic and social growth.
“Every time we build a new facility, an organization or program that brings people together for a purpose, we encourage social growth,” he said. “It’s in the day camps, and the rec programs that we run. It’s in the library, it’s in the public spaces that we build where people see each other and they see their community.
“It’s on the bus, it’s at the market, it’s on closed pedestrianized streets, it’s in playgrounds, it’s at the rinks and the soccer field and the cricket pitch and that’s the sort of thing that the City of Barrie does,” Lehman said. “It’s in the events that we run, our community celebrations — Kempenfest, tree lighting, the New Year’s Eve (celebration). It’s in the groups that we fund and support.”
And those connections affect how we treat each other.
“It’s hard to hate somebody up close — it’s easy through a screen,” Lehman said. “But we can fight that polarization by continuing to build the places and the programs that connect people and that is what municipalities are all about.
“Not bound by partisanship, we’re not polarized by ideology, we’re founded in pragmatism. Local government is about getting things done.”
Then he got to the municipal meat and potatoes, that jobs were created here during the last decade, the city’s debt was down, its credit rating up, the city’s relative standard of living was good, there was less garbage going into the city landfill and less pollution into Lake Simcoe.
Barrie has doubled its housing starts, Lehman said, and this year building permit values are more than $1 billion for the first time in the city’s history. Downtown development is flourishing.
“We don’t hear from 80, 90 per cent of the population in doing what we do, ever,” he said. “And these are people who by and large just want us to do good things.
“Not waste money, make the neighbourhood safer, make the community a better place. That’s the silent majority and all the speechifying we do, all the online posts we do, all the outrage, none of that matters to them one bit, they want us to get things done.
“And we got things done,” Lehman said of his time on council.
There was more, of course. There always is with Lehman but that’s usually a good thing.
He spoke of not only Barrie’s natural beauty, but of the way residents treat each other, such as the long line of cars filled with donations following the July 2021 tornado.
“If we value kindness and compassion, and initiative, if we believe in people, if we value action over talk and we continue to invest in our future, we will make our city even more beautiful,” Lehman said. “So be kind to each other, go build a more beautiful city and thank you for letting me be a part of it the last 16 years.”
Lehman’s message is something to keep in mind as Barrie gets its next mayor and council, elected Oct. 24 and to be sworn in Nov. 16.
We’ll see how they take to these marching orders, or are they just food for thought, in the next four years.
Bob Bruton is a staff reporter covering city hall for BarrieToday.
