Residents have harsh criticism for East Gwillimbury electoral review

Yorkregion.com
Jan. 3, 2017
By Simon Martin

After months of consultations, the few East Gwillimbury residents who participated in the town’s electoral review had harsh criticisms for the process.

The four public consultations held in the fall as part of the review only managed to bring in a grand total of 25 citizens, none of whom attended the meeting in Harvest Hills. In total, only 148 surveys were filled out as part of the review.

Sharon resident Hyacinthe Miller questioned why numbers from the surveys were even used.

“This is not a big enough of sample. The town should hire some political science students to go door-to-door. People didn’t know it was going on,” she said.

Miller was part of a resident group that was clamouring for an electoral review back in 2010, but she fears this review lacked the proper people backing it.

“The low rate of response indicated it wasn’t well executed,” she said.

The content of the public consultation also left Miller wanting more.  She said nobody seemed to know how much it would cost to add more councillors and too much time was spent discussing ranked ballots which was an issue that was never going to be on the table, Miller said.

That sentiment was shared by Holland Landing resident Doug Leitch who said he thought the consultants were more interested in getting East Gwillimbury to become the first municipality in Ontario to adopt a ranked  ballot than actually engaging in productive dialogue.

As for the preferred option in the review’s final report of moving East Gwillimbury to a ward system, Leitch said he hopes that doesn’t happen. 

“I see more issues with them than benefits,” he said. “I am concerned that we are going to make our governance more complicated with different agendas from across the different wards.”
If cities like Vancouver can avoid a ward system, Leitch said East Gwillimbury certainly can to.

Holland Landing resident Barry Sanderson was also one of the few people to show up to the meetings and that was troubling for him.

“It’s definitely concerning because a lot of people are not paying attention to what’s going on and how it is going to affect them,” he said. “People do not pay attention. They don’t read the papers.”

Sanderson doesn’t see the need for the town to move to a ward system or add more councillors. He wasn’t the only one alarmed at the attendance. After six citizens showed up to the consultation in Mount Albert in September, Melody Somerville called the turnout pathetic.

The final report found that 60 per cent of the 148 survey respondents preferred wards as a way to elect councillors. The consultants did note that approximately half the respondents identified themselves as residents of Mount Albert and that Mount Albert respondents disproportionately favoured a ward system.  Mount Albert currently does not have a resident on council.

Council will continue to discuss the report in the coming months before a decision is made on the system that will be in place for 2018 election.