Earlier today, McNab/Braeside Mayor Lori Hoddinott shared a post on multiple social media sites where she lambasted Mayor Lisa McGee of the Town of Arnprior for comments about amalgamation, annexation and municipal restructuring made at Arnprior’s All Candidates Meeting a couple of weeks ago.
While I share Mayor Hoddinott’s belief that any discussions about the Township’s future must include the Township, I am disappointed that the Mayor decided to use this off-hand comment from a politician in our neighbouring municipality as a political attack without doing any due diligence first.
When I saw the allegations earlier today, I reached out to Mayor McGee to seek to better understand what had happened and what discussions had occurred between the Town, Township and Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing. Mayor McGee was gracious with her time to provide some additional context that I am sharing with you here. She shared that the discussions at issue with the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing were preliminary / exploratory in nature and that she had a prior conversation with Mayor Hoddinott regarding the issue at hand. At that time, Mayor Hoddinott was not interested in engaging with the Town as the Township’s representative and did not wish to discuss anything outside of the Town extending water and sewer services to Township properties.
In my experience after a decade working in municipal administration, it does not appear to me that these discussions were unusual or untoward. However, what is disappointing is that Mayor Hoddinott appears to have known about the issue at hand, she was given the opportunity to discuss it with the Town’s Mayor and she decided not to sit down with the Town to discuss, only to then post on social media with half the backstory to support her re-election campaign. That is not what we should expect of our Township Mayor and all of McNab/Braeside deserves better.
Despite what Mayor Hoddinott insinuates in her post, my stance on municipal restructuring is simple: McNab/Braeside and its residents are the ones to determine our collective future and any discussions on changes to our boundaries must be discussed openly and transparently with our community. If we don’t act transparency and engage in good faith, we risk not only further damaging the public trust but we also risk provoking a forced decision where Ministry staff in Toronto start to decide for us, an outcome which no one wants.
The Town of Arnprior, other municipalities, developers and the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing should not have a say in the future of our community and as Mayor, I will fairly, respectfully and transparently represent the Township in any such discussions and work collaboratively alongside Council and our residents to make sure that McNab/Braeside’s voice is the one that is heard loud and clear.
Finally, let’s also not put a damper on what we should be doing to improve the lives of people living in McNab/Braeside. I believe that we should work together with our neighbouring municipalities to advance our shared priorities, whether that is shared public services or joint recreation programs to reduce costs and increase what we can offer for our residents. I believe that we are stronger when we work together with our neighbours as equal partners, focused on delivering better public services for our residents.