Markham councillor tells colleagues to ‘shut up your mouth’ during heated budget debate

Thestar.com
March 4, 2019
Lisa Queen

Markham Councillor Joe Li told colleagues suggesting he was irresponsible for voting against York Region’s budget to “shut up your mouth” during a heated debate over council’s tax hike Thursday.

Although regional staff trimmed the proposed tax increase down to 2.96 per cent from the 3.37 per cent first floated in January, Li and fellow Markham Councillor Don Hamilton said that wasn’t enough.

Markham Regional Councillor Joe Li moments after York Region council passed its budget on Thursday. Li told councillors who criticized him for voting against the budget to ‘shut up your mouth.’

Council ultimately approved the 2.96 per cent tax increase -- plus an additional one per cent for road projects, bringing the total tax hike to 3.96 per cent on the regional portion of the property tax bill -- but not before Li and Hamilton criticized the burden being put on taxpayers.

The increase shouldn’t be any higher than 2.5 per cent to keep in line with the rate of inflation, Hamilton said.

“I can’t support this, it’s still too high,” he said.

“I think we’ve forgotten there are people out there that are living day-to-day, paycheque-to-paycheque, and while there’s a lot of people who are wealthy and can afford this quite easily, there are a lot of people who can’t. I think we have to be more respectful of staying within the inflation rate.”

Li and Hamilton wanted staff to take another crack at finding additional savings and indicated they would vote against the budget.

The discussion then became inflamed when some councillors, including Richmond Hill Councillor Carmine Perrelli and Georgina Mayor Margaret Quirk, said it was irresponsible to reject the budget without proposing an alternative.

An upset Li said he had every right to vote against the financial document.

“This is a democratic society. I don’t need to take a lecture from my colleagues saying that I’m irresponsible,” he said, saying he was “totally disgusted” by the criticism.

“I would rather suggest you shut up your mouth.”

Hamilton argued “it wouldn’t be the end of the world” if council voted down the budget and sent staff back to the drawing board to start the budget process again.

“Don’t preach Armageddon here. We could easily go back and look for more efficiencies again and come back again with a solid budget,” he said.