Each year, the United Counties of Stormont, Dundas, and Glengarry’s council elects a new warden. The warden is the head of the 12-person council. While the position used to be more of a figurehead of council and administration, reforms to municipal operations in Ontario post-amalgamation (1997-98) placed more responsibility on this position. The process to select the warden should reflect the increased importance of the role. In SDG Counties, it does not.
Currently, the 12-member council, which is comprised of the mayor and deputy mayor of each of the six lower-tier municipalities within SDG, select amongst themselves the warden. Interest in the position is declared in July and voted on by secret ballot in August. Following the election of a new warden, that person then has three months of learning from the current warden until December, when the new warden is installed with a ceremony. This process happens each year, even when a warden seeks a second consecutive term, and there are rarely more than two candidates each election. In the event of a tie vote (6-6), the process to resolve that tie means a re-vote, and if there is still a deadlocked vote, names are drawn from a hat.
To be clear, resolving the election of the top upper-tier municipal position by drawing a slip of paper from a hat is nonsensical at best and amateurish. One may as well draw straws or choose a number between one and ten to break the tie. Yet this process remains, and multiple attempts to reform this by past councils have failed. No attempts have been made in the current term of council to reform this process, but there is still time. If the position is to be seen as being serious and important, the selection process should reflect this.
A solution advocated for by this newspaper before is to elect the warden at-large across all six municipalities. This is presently done only where rural counties operate as a single-tier council, but could be adopted here. This takes the decision out of the council of 12 and allows a direct democratic vote by the entire population. It does mean adding one more person to council. Another solution is to return to the former precedent of alternating the wardenship across the three counties that make up SDG – this enables equitable representation from all geographic areas. However, this means the best person for the role may not be selected – diminishing the credibility of the warden’s position.
The compromise solution, without expanding the size of council and still having the best person at the table able to lead, is to remove the silly draw-from-a-hat option and force council to keep voting and lobbying each other until one candidate wins. After all, if one candidate can lobby enough votes to break a voting deadlock, would that not make them the best candidate for the role after all?
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