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Within the last five years, 135 votes were improperly held in closed session by Stratford city council, according to a recent report.
The report was done by Tony Fleming of Cunningham, Swan, Carty, Little & Bonham LLP, the closed-meeting investigator for the City of Stratford, after receiving a complaint in May 2023.
More than 140 meetings were reviewed in total.
“The investigation found that at 127 of those meetings, where votes took place, one third of council voting was illegal,” Mike Sullivan said, delegating at Monday night’s council meeting. “Out of the 416 votes, 281 were legitimate and 135 should have been held in public meetings.
“That is, on average, more than one a meeting.”
Many of the votes taken, the investigator said in his report, were “minor” or "technical.” Other improperly held votes were more serious in nature.
For example, as Sullivan pointed out, at the May 24, 2022 meeting, council voted to give the CAO authority to issue an RFP and then enter into a contract for specified services, without tender, for up to $300,000. It was not revealed to the public.
Sullivan pointed out that five of Stratford’s current council were members in 2018, the beginning of this investigation’s scope.
Mayor Martin Ritsma was a councillor at that time, serving alongside councillors Cody Sebben, Jo-Dee Burbach, Brad Beatty, and Bonnie Henderson.
The current council began to serve office in November 2022. Since that time, one meeting had improper voting, Fleming’s investigation found.
On April 24, 2023 a number of “substantive” agreements were voted upon, including the transfer of property from one party to another and the extension of an agreement with another party regarding property.
“The fact that the investigator found examples of illegal votes during your term means that old habits die hard,” Sullivan said.
The commissioner noted that over the five years it looked at Stratford’s closed meetings, there were two elections and other investigations done, two from its office and one from another investigator.
“We highlight these changes in order to acknowledge that the manner in which city council has conducted its closed session votes at various times in the past, and thus the improper votes identified in this report, may not be reflective of the practices today,” Fleming said. “We note, for example, that we only found three improper votes which occurred after our October, 2022, report was released.”
In October 2022, Fleming provided a similar report to council investigating 146 meetings from January 2020 to June 2021. The meetings were included in the scope of this most recent investigation.
Fleming recommends that council and staff obtain further training and that an effort be made for consistency, noting that recurring topics did not follow the same procedure.
Additionally, he recommended that council should ensure resolutions are clearly worded, have procedures for moving to open sessions, and decisions should not be bundled together.
Without discussion, council voted to receive the report and refer it to staff and legal counsel for review. A report will come to an upcoming council meeting with recommendations from staff on how to respond.
The full, 120- plus page report is available in Monday night's agenda.
