A Chatham councillor wants to have a third party look into how Chatham-Kent is governed.
Specifically, Chatham Coun. Derek Robertson wants a consultant to analyse the following:Â providing ward representation by population, providing equal representation by ward and reducing the size of council significantly.
The Sydenham Current spoke with Robertson to gather some further insight behind the notice of motion he brought forward on Monday.
“First, I believe our governance model is broken. I said that in the last term of council. If you take a look at the impetus of the Ontario Municipal Board’s recommendations for governance, you’ll find two key principles at all times. Those are… when you have representation by ward, it should be a representation by population. Secondly and equally as important, equal representation by ward.”
Robertson said it is obvious that Chatham-Kent does not enjoy a representation by population as it relates to the current ward structure.
“We have wards of 40,000 people, 17,000 people, and four wards of somewhere between 10,000 and 13,000 people, he said. “Secondly, we have wards of six councillors, three councillors and two councillors everywhere else. We don’t abide by the impetus of equal representation by ward.”
Robertson said it should not be an expensive task to complete, as the bulk of the work and data is already available.
“This third party does not have to be exhaustive in terms of cost because there is already a significant amount of data available to us in terms of reports, in terms of public consultation, through the reports specifically related to the governance task force during the 2006-2010 term. There is enough data available that a recommendation can be made that this council can live with.”
Robertson said there is no reason why the Chatham-Kent council is 40 per cent the size of the Toronto council.
“We have a larger council than London, we have a larger council than Windsor, we virtually have a larger council than every other municipality in Ontario with 103,000 people,” he said. “Nobody can logically explain this to me, other than to say that we have large communities of interest. Sorry… there is no reason why our communities of interest cannot remain intact with proper representation, but it is not done with having 17 members of council and a mayor. It’s fundamentally broken.”
During his time on council, Robertson said he has seen two issues that have arisen with this “broken system.”
“From a governance perspective, we sometimes can’t get out of our own way. It takes a council that is governing 103,000 people an hour and a half to say hello some evenings. We’re not efficient, we don’t get to the core of our business at hand in an efficient manner. I’ve sat on a number of not-for-profit boards, I’ve sat on the council, I have not seen one yet that operates well with 18 people at the table.”
Robertson said there is a second piece to the puzzle, adding “it is equally important.
“As a currently elected official, I think this is very salient. There is an electoral problem… there is an electoral unfairness that has been institutionalized in the system that we abide by in Chatham-Kent. It’s more prevalent in one ward more than any other, and it is more prevalent in my ward, Ward 6,” Robertson said.
“If we continue to elect six councillors in Ward 6, continually year after year, term after term. There is an institutionalized unfairness and bias towards the incumbents that does not allow for proper changeover and turnover of council on a regular basis. Folks that are against reducing the size of council, will come up with all sorts of reasons why that isn’t true.”
Robertson said there is a tagging of votes come election time in Chatham-Kent.
“So you get a really good representative… a person like Larry Vellinga, who came very close to being elected. People pointed to Larry and said that is a guy that I’d like to elect, and voted for him. When they did vote for him, they went to the docket and said ‘oh yeah, I need to vote for six… so I’ll vote for Larry… Sulman, Bondy, Robertson, Myers’ and boom, you’ve just re-elected all the same people over again.”
Robertson said he personally believes Chatham (Ward 6) should be broken up into three wards, with modest adjustments made elsewhere, and one candidate elected in each ward along with a mayor.
Robertson’s motion is set to come before council next month.
