No Code of Conduct breach for Hilchey
Township Integrity Commissioner Connie Phillipson paid a visit to Mulmur Council Tuesday morning, telling them in no uncertain terms that she does not have the jurisdiction to deal with their concerns about Councillor Lynn Hilchey.
With the exception of Deputy Mayor Rhonda Campbell Moon, Council had been unsure of this position after reviewing a written report from Phillipson presented at their last meeting; following that discussion, they passed a motion to give the Integrity Commissioner clearer direction, in the form of a request for an official inquiry to look at whether Hilchey’s alleged transgressions of the Township’s zoning and property maintenance bylaws constituted a breach of Council’s Code of Conduct.
But in person Tuesday morning, Phillipson explained that the Code of Conduct lists 11 specific transgressions that she has jurisdiction over: the acceptance of gifts or benefits; the disclosure of confidential information; the use of Township property or services for personal benefit; failure to follow the Municipal Elections Act; inappropriate conduct toward Township staff; the mixing of personal and Township business; inappropriate conduct at Council or Committee meetings; inappropriate conduct regarding current or prospective employment; improper use of influence; disrespect for the decision-making process of Council; or obstruction of the work of the Integrity Commissioner.
An introductory section of the Code lists several “key principles” on which the document is founded; one of these states that “Members of Council are expected to perform their duties in Office and arrange their private affairs in a manner that promotes public confidence and will bear the burden of close public scrutiny.” However, Phillipson made it clear that her role is “not to investigate principles, but to investigate offences.”
She also suggested that if Council wanted her to be able to weigh in on situations like Hilchey’s in the future, they would have to add another provision to the offences section of the code, including discreditable conduct as one of the transgressions. Such a move would not be retroactive, however, so would not be applicable to the current situation. And Phillipson added that inserting such a clause would not be her recommendation, as the Code of Conduct is meant to deal with transgressions that have no other process for disciplinary actions.
Contraventions of zoning bylaws or property maintenance bylaws are punishable under those pieces of legislation, and to bring further action under a Code of Conduct could be interpreted as a case of double jeopardy, she said.
“To my knowledge, no other municipal Code of Conduct has such a provision,” she said.
Mulmur Township has had an Integrity Commissioner in place since April 20, 2011, and Mayor Paul Mills agreed with Phillipson that the current situation was part of a “learning process” for all involved. With that, Council decided to defer any further action on the file to its next meeting.
Solar Project for Township Building
Mulmur Township will resubmit an application under the Ontario Power Authority’s Feed-In-Tariff (FIT) program, in hopes of installing solar panels on the roofs of both the Township building and the utility shed that sits on the same property.
Mulmur’s initial application was made in March 2011, but was not processed in time to be granted before the first round of FIT contracts was completed. A new intake has now begun, and Robert Stein of Fitz Construction Services visited Council Tuesday to bring them up to date on several changes to the program.
First and foremost, the rates paid for both solar and wind projects have been decreased, to reflect decreased equipment costs, said Stein. Where Mulmur would have been paid 71.3 cents per kilowatt had they been approved under the old system, they can now expect to receive 54.8 cents per kilowatt. However, the project envisioned in 2011 would have cost $310,000 and produced up to 62 kWh; the project they will now apply for will cost $260,000 and produce up to 75 kWh. Considering the differences in cost and return, Stein said the final result would be about even.
The second major change to the FIT program is that applications are now being prioritized based on project type, municipal support, aboriginal support, project readiness and electricity system benefit. With a total of seven priority points available, projects will be granted three points for community co-op participation, three points for aboriginal participation, two points for participation from school boards or health care institutions, two points for municipal council support, two points for aboriginal support, one point for project readiness, one point if the project application was timestamped before July 24, 2011, a half a point if it was timestamped after July 5, 2011, two points if the project is being hosted on a school or hospital, and one point if there is a clear benefit to the electricity system. The Mulmur project, Stein explained, would get four points: two for its municipal support, one for its readiness and one for the fact that it was originally applied for in March 2011.
A third change to the FIT program now asserts that projects must be completed within 18 months of approval; Stein anticipated an approval for Mulmur in March 2014, meaning the Township would have until December 2014 to get its system up and running.
Asked about how the Township would fund the project, treasurer Harry Bunker said the money would have to be debentured or borrowed from a commercial bank. He anticipated that the project would pay for itself in eight-and-a-half years, and that it would generate a profit of about $380,000 over the life of the 20-year FIT project.
With that, Council voted unanimously to re-submit the application.
No Money for Medical Centre
Two weeks after hearing a request for financial support from Creemore Medical Centre chair Bill Mann, Mulmur Council decided Monday night to postpone any talk of contributing to the building’s expansion plans until the Township’s 2013 budget is under discussion.
After noting that one third of the Medical Centre’s patrons hail from Mulmur Township, Mann had suggested a donation of $30,000, but on Tuesday Council decided that there was no money to be found in this year’s budget to make such a contribution.
Noting that Council had just voted to add $2,500 to the $5,000 they had previously committed to the paving of the Shelburne Public Library’s parking lot, Councillor Earl Hawkins said he believed it made “more sense to make a contribution to a medical centre than to a parking lot.” However, while the money for the Library is coming out of development charges, Treasurer Bunker told Council he had no mechanism to find money for the Creemore Medical Centre in the current budget.
This led to an extended discussion of the peculiar situation that Mulmur finds itself in, being serviced by three fire departments, several libraries and several health care institutions, all of them but one fire department existing outside municipal boundaries.
“We’re really torn here in Mulmur Township,” said Hawkins. To that end, Campbell Moon said there was a need “to comprehensively look at what our constituents want us to do” when committing money to outside institutions.
Council then voted to defer discussion of a contribution to the Creemore Medical Centre to its 2013 budget deliberations.
OMB Settlements Reached
Mulmur Council voted Tuesday morning to accept the terms of two settlements with regard to outstanding appeals of the Township’s Official Plan. One final appeal, filed by Conserving Our Rural Environment (CORE) and dealing with the mapping of the aggregate extraction area on the Arbour Farms property, remains unsettled and will be heard by the Ontario Municipal Board during a three-day hearing at the Mulmur Township office, beginning at 11 am on Tuesday, October 16.
One of the settlements approved Tuesday morning dealt with the now-resolved dispute with John Thomson over the 3rd Line; the second involved the Township accepting several changes to the wording of the Official Plan’s general policies regarding resource extraction, which were suggested by appellant Arbour Farms.
