Province urged to look into mayor demotion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 17/12/2019 (2143 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

An RM of St. Andrews council decision to strip its mayor of her duties has caused some to worry about the future of democracy, sparking a call for involvement from the provincial government.

In a 5-2 vote, St. Andrews council took away Mayor Joy Sul’s roles as chair of council meetings and as spokesperson of the rural municipality. The mayor usually holds both positions. 

More than 100 people were in attendance for the emergency meeting at the municipality’s office in Clandeboye on Monday.

Deputy Mayor John Preun was named the new chair and municipal spokesperson.

Debbie Kozyra, the former mayor of Teulon, said councillors violated the municipality’s bylaws — and she wants the province’s Municipal Relations department to get involved.

Kozyra was stripped of her powers as mayor in the summer. She said she went through the same thing Sul is facing now, but when she was in office, she didn’t know councillors had violated any bylaws.

“These guys missed the same thing,” Kozyra said. 

She pointed to a specific RM of St. Andrews bylaw. In the bylaw, appointing a chair and deputy chair happens by the first regular council meeting of the year — not on Dec. 16, after there have been many council meetings.

Kozyra also noted a section saying a special meeting must be called by the mayor. The interim chief administrative officer chaired the meeting on Monday, Kozyra said.

“What is happening here is a total coup against democracy,” she said. “When people elect someone, they elect those people to be the leader of their municipality, they don’t elect them to be a counsellor.”

She wants Municipal Relations to investigate what’s happening at the RM of St. Andrews because it affects other municipalities.

“Any mayor or reeve can be stripped of their powers by a council,” Kozyra said. “Not by the people that voted them in, but by the council. They can pass whatever bylaws they want, and if they have the majority vote, they can do what they want.” 

St. Andrews’ council has been divided for months, said Sul. However, she wasn’t expecting to be stripped of her powers on Monday.

“It felt like a blind side,” Sul said.

She said a big point of division in council has been St. Andrews’ ongoing wastewater project — she is against it, while many councillors are for it. Some councillors don’t like that Sul takes notes during meetings, and one councillor she doesn’t wish to name finds all of her comments “biased,” so that may have contributed to council’s decision Monday, she said.

Five male councillors voted to remove Sul’s responsibilities. She and Coun. Kristin Hoebee, the only other female, voted against the motion. However, Sul said gender probably wasn’t a factor in the decision.

“I don’t want to go that route,”  she said. “There shouldn’t be a differentiation of the sexes.”

Sul said she’ll carry on with council. She can still cast a vote on council decisions, but her role as mayor is more of a title now.

“I’m saddened that this even happened,” Sul said. “I’m the representative of the residents. I was the clear choice. Whatever is done to me is done against the residents.”

Sul was elected with 61 per cent of the vote in October 2018.

Deputy Mayor Preun told people at Monday’s meeting there is a problem with Sul shutting down debates.

He described the atmosphere at council meetings as “combative” and “antagonistic,” saying the majority of councillors felt something had to be done in order for the RM to move forward.

“It’s a tough thing to do, and we lamented over it for a long time, but after numerous attempts to try and make her a better leader and a better person, it wasn’t working out,” he said.

He added Sul recommended changes to procedural bylaws “for her benefit.”

“The spokesperson change was generated due to concern that the previous spokesperson was presenting personal views rather than the views of the Council,” Preun said in a written statement. “Democracy is in place to elect a group to oversee the Municipality. That oversight is a group effort, not individually driven.”

Coun. Hoebee was named deputy chairwoman — a position she plans to decline.

Hoebee said in past months there has been a division between the men and women on council when it comes to voting, but feels that is related to policy issues, not gender. She said she has been concerned about what she calls the “methodical” changing of bylaws to strip the mayor of her duties.

“It is not about what you want to do as councillors, but what we were elected to do together, and run this RM with dignity and honour. What has been happening in the past few months, in my opinion, lacks both those qualities,” Hoebee said.

— with files from The Canadian Press 

gabrielle.piche@freepress.mb.ca