Sault City Council Schools Rookie Councillor on Civility
An Epic Showdown Ends in Censure and Censorship
Well, the Sault Ste. Marie City Council meeting of April 8 sure exceeded expectations.
If I had to summarize, I’d say it was like an episode of Jerry Springer for people that paid attention in civics class.
Image Credit: City of Sault Ste. Marie (via YouTube)
The meeting was poised for an epic showdown between Councillor Stephan Kinach and everyone else.
Mayor Matthew Shoemaker prefaced the relevant portion of the meeting with some commentary.
He said, in part:
“There is nothing, nothing inappropriate about Councillors questioning and challenging staff on their reports and recommendations. That’s what we’re elected to do... There is a productive way to get things done and there are ramifications for taking an unproductive and unprofessional approach.”
Sensing the wind at his back amid an outpouring of local support, Councillor Kinach defied the wishes of the Mayor and Council (and a preliminary recommendation from the Integrity Commissioner) and refused to apologize.
He essentially dared Council to go further than accepting the Integrity Commissioner’s report as information.
And not only did he not apologize, but he also directly questioned the City Clerk, Rachel Tyczinski.
He asked her about a potential personal relationship with Integrity Commissioner, Antoinette Blunt, and in doing so, raised the spectre of nepotism in the halls of the Civic Centre in an indirect manner.
He was abruptly cut off by Mayor Shoemaker and his microphone was briefly turned off.
And then Mayor Shoemaker lost his patience.
Councillor Kinach asked Tyczinski: “Would you consider yourself friends?”
Immediately, Mayor Shoemaker responded: “That is neither relevant nor applicable.”
Councillor Kinach then referenced alleged correspondence between Blunt and Tyczinski on Facebook.
“You’re not going to do that,” said Mayor Shoemaker.
He continued:
“What you are going down the path of is much more serious, and there will be absolutely no entertaining of it. And frankly, you need to learn your role better because this is not your role.”
To cap off the exchange, Councillor Kinach noted that his name was misspelled in the Integrity Commissioner’s report, which means there are at least two typos in it.
He then voted in favour of his own formal reprimand, explaining that he had strategized the quickest and cheapest route to an inevitable outcome: a formal reprimand from his Council colleagues.
In a surprising move, SooToday published emails provided by Councillor Kinach between himself and CAO Tom Vair and Mayor Shoemaker.
They’re quite revealing.
They show that Kinach was essentially provided an ultimatum by CAO Vair and Mayor Shoemaker.
As far as I can tell, there wasn’t a formal complaint.
An anonymous senior staff member threatened to file a formal complaint if a public apology wasn’t forthcoming.
Although CAO Vair and Mayor Shoemaker wouldn’t disclose the would-be complainant for privacy reasons, they were pretty comfortable attempting to mediate the controversy behind the scenes.
Here’s what Mayor Shoemaker wrote to Councillor Kinach via email:
“[I]t is going to be a lot less awkward for you to quickly and painlessly apologize for this than it will be for all of us to have to debate what the appropriate penalty is if the integrity commissioner finds there’s been a breach of the code of conduct. Of course, it’s entirely possible that the integrity commissioner won’t find a breach, but it is certain that there won’t be an integrity commissioner investigation if an apology does happen.”
Translation: You can do this the easy way or the hard way.
Old Boys (and a Few Girls) Club: 1
Kinach: 0
Not quite.
Despite enduring some lecturing from his colleagues, Kinach managed to accomplish the impossible.
He made a usually unflappable Mayor Shoemaker lose his composure in public and was able to convey, albeit indirectly, what many in Sault Ste. Marie already believe: nepotism is alive and well all over the city.
And the Mayor and Council failed to recognize the obvious consequence of formally reprimanding Councillor Kinach.
Even if there’s a higher principle at play, residents are unlikely to view a formal reprimand as a necessary corrective to guarantee a basic minimum of civility and decorum at Council.
Instead, they’re going to view it as further evidence of the incompetence and irrelevance of municipal politics, a perception that’s much more widespread than anybody cares to admit publicly.
As I mentioned previously, I’m not a fan of what Councillor Kinach said.
I’ve followed municipal politics closely for most of my adult life, and I’ve witnessed it occasionally lurch from one dumpster fire to the next.
But that doesn’t mean that I think those in the Civic Centre are bad people, or that they’re deliberately working against residents.
At a time when norms of civility are eroding at a staggering pace, we also need to collectively uphold high standards of behaviour for public officeholders.
But at the same time, there needs to be an outlet for the legitimate frustrations of residents.
When they fester over time without an appropriate outlet, they risk exploding in unpredictable and unproductive ways.
Instead of the other Council members validating a legitimate concern among their own constituents, they paternalistically lectured Councillor Kinach and policed his tone.
For me, watching the Council meeting illustrated a sad truism about politics: sometimes when you highlight a problem, you end up becoming the problem.
And this is the huge irony of the controversy: instead of discussing the substance of the issue (whether the City is too reliant upon external consultants), we’re discussing whether the tone of voicing that issue was appropriate.
In Mayor Shoemaker’s preface at Council, he made that precise argument, but then failed to facilitate any of the substantive discussion that he allegedly desired.
If he did, and the rest of Council were genuinely interested in having that discussion, they’d inevitably get to the most important question:
If there are several City staff raking in six figure salaries, why are they unable to do their own high-quality research and offer objective policy recommendations?
They’d also have to ask the City why it has an Integrity Commissioner (a consultant, no less) that’s not a lawyer, when legal analysis seems to be an important part of their job.
To compound the distraction over Councillor Kinach’s tone, local media is content to cover the story to collect the clicks, but they’re not doing a good job of asking critical questions and fact checking.
Surely, they could pull up their socks and interview legal experts in this area to see what they think, rather than assuming that our current cast of characters is authoritative.
On a final note (and not to excuse the behaviour of Councillor Kinach) but observers aren’t wrong that other Council members have previously approached, if not crossed, normal lines of civility.
Frank Manzo comes to mind immediately, and that thought led me to unearthing this bizarre clip.
But if you’re wondering who takes the cake for Northern Ontario municipal shenanigans, it’s hard to beat the former Mayor of Thunder Bay, Walter (“Wally”) Assef.
In this clip, you can appreciate how and why codes of conduct developed over time.