Stouffville Mayor Justin Altmann runs for re-election, wife runs for council
'It is time to take back our home town' mayor says as he pitches slate of council candidates including wife Jenny Altmann

YorkRegion.com
May 30, 2018
Simon Martin

For those thinking Whitchurch-Stouffville Mayor Justin Altmann might be done with politics after being banned by council from the municipal office and from speaking to town employees, they were sorely mistaken.

Altmann filed his nominations papers for mayor May 29 and it came with a twist.  Four local community members, including his wife, Jenny Altmann, filed their papers to run for council along with him.

In a message on Facebook, Altmann appealed to supporters to come sign nomination papers on May 28.

“I along with several well respected, community orientated, family loving, Stouffville going, honest, transparent, accountable and true hearted candidates ask you to please come out,” he wrote. “It is time to take back our home town. It is time to put our community first once again as a whole and not simply cater to specific corporations or individuals.”

Justin, Jenny, who is running for councillor in Ward 5, Brian Sankarsingh, who is running for councillor in Ward 4, Keith Singer, who is running for councillor in Ward 3 and Ellen Gowland, who is running in Ward 2, all appear to be running together as part of a slate. Each of them listed the same website, c3stouffville.com, as their campaign website.

“This will be one of the greatest grassroots movements in municipal history and it will be one of the hardest and challenging elections ever,” he wrote.

The municipal election is Oct. 22.

The mayor’s term has been marked by controversy.

In March, he was barred from talking to town staff, entering town facilities unless it’s a council meeting and docked six months pay for his refusal to apologize in the wake of an integrity commissioner report into the mind-map found on his bathroom wall and speaking about details of an in-camera meeting on a local radio show.

Last month, it was revealed that former town employee Tamara Carlson was suing the town and the mayor.  In her claim, she alleged that from the time she began to work with the mayor in 2014, she experienced harassment and is seeking $700,000 in damages. The allegations have not been proven in court.

An ethics investigation found the wall in the mayor’s bathroom breached the town’s code of conduct and constituted workplace harassment. Altmann was ordered to apologize and docked one month of pay. The mayor didn’t apologize, which prompted a second ethics investigation this year that led to harsher penalties enacted by council.

Documents obtained by the Stouffville Sun-Tribune revealed YRP investigated and cleared Altmann for remarks made in reference to then-interim chief administrative officer and now deputy CAO Rob Raycroft in 2017. According to the police report, Altmann is to have alleged to have said to another employee: “I want Raycroft’s head on a platter. I want him dead.”

The investigation was closed, with the detective writing Altmann “did not explicitly utter a threat to cause bodily harm or death to Raycroft, rather only wished him death.”