3 Big Stories at Last Night's Council Meeting (2 of Them Won't Be Reported in the Era)

I have been waiting this morning for Rogers TV to post the video of last night's council meeting so I could link to the key segments of the meeting.  Unfortunately the video isn't available yet and I have to get on with my work day. 

The Council meeting was remarkable for three reasons.

First, this meeting introduced new technology to Newmarket Council where all votes are finally recorded.  Residents will finally be able to see how their representative at Town Hall voted on any particular issue.  This information will be available on-line and the Mayor promises us it will be searchable. 

And while that is huge news, it wasn't the biggest stories of the evening. 

The biggest stories of the evening happened at inauspicious times during the meeting and I will eat my hat if the Era newspaper reports on either of these items.

Mayor Van Bynen and Sexism

 Council heard from a speaker on the matter of women in politics.  This speaker referred to the late-Shirley Chisholm who you can read about here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shirley_Chisholm  

Shirley Chisholm was a black, female congresswoman who ran to be the Democratic Party nominee for President in 1972.  She is often quoted for saying, "When I ran for the Congress, when I ran for president, I met more discrimination as a woman than for being black. Men are men."

Afterwards, Councillor Di Muccio thanked the speaker and offered some of her own experiences as a female politician. 

Of course, there has been allegations about Mayor Van Bynen being a misogynist, and I have written before that I believe he is more of a wimp than a misogynist.  But even I was second guessing when he interrupts Councillor Di Muccio mid sentence.  Clearly he is extremely uncomfortable with women discussing their experiences with sexism. 

Before anyone rushes to his defense saying that the Mayor was trying to keep the meeting on track, I ask you to look at the video (when it is available) regarding other speakers during this meeting.  He did not interrupt anyone else who spoke (other than to say, "You are out of time.")

The video evidence of Mayor Van Bynen's obvious discomfort while listening to a woman speaking about sexism is damning.  It begs the question we all should be asking:  Should a man with such prejudicial opinions on the topic of sexism be Mayor of the Town of Newmarket?    

On Council Transparency

Another item that will go unreported in the Era is the lengths that this Council plans to go through to hide the secrets of the soccer loan.  It should be as plain as the nose on every Newmarket taxpayer's face that this deal is a bad one for taxpayers.  We just don't know the reasons why it stinks (yet).

Thanks to Councillor Di Muccio, who reminds the CAO that is her job to ask these questions, the Soccer bailout is being kept alive.  But I question why she stands alone in asking these tough questions.  Shouldn't every member of this Council be asking who among the staff of the Town of Newmarket is being so cavalier with public funds and what is being done to minimize risks?

Not according to John Taylor.  He wants a report that lists all the documents that he has received so far from staff about the Soccer Club.  He misses the point that is obvious to the rest of us -- what's the point to giving the public a list of documents?  Why won't John Taylor and his allies make the secret documents that he wants to list available for the public to read? 

And more importantly, why won't staff answer Councillor Di Muccio's questions?  She reported last night that she has been waiting since June on some of these.  Some of the staff responses were so full of spin last night that you would think they were running in the next election.  Leave the spin to the politicians fellows.

Again, when the line of Councillor Di Muccio's questioning got the CAO squirming on the hot seat, Mayor Van Bynen stepped in to shut the Councillor up.  He justified his action by saying that Councillor Kerwin needed time to introduce his item of "new business".

And what was Kerwin's important new business item?  Just a thank you to a staff member.  Next time, Dave, have the decency to cede your time to the Councillor asking the questions that the public wants answered.  Kerwin could have sent a Hallmark Thank You card instead.