In 2022 I ran on three key values: Vision, Communication, and Collaboration. Each of those values had three key goals. I hope to return to council for the 2026-2030 term, so I thought it worthwhile to evaluate how well I did in achieving those goals.
Those values and goals have been on the front page of my website all term. Here they are, verbatim, whether they’ve been achieved, and what role I had in those achievements.
Collaboration
Councillors maintain professional and congenial relationships despite disagreements
I remember the first time I attended a council meeting, as a relatively new resident of Brighton. It was busy; I had to stand in the hall. I was told by other residents that I needed to arrive early if I wanted a seat. The chatter in the gallery was as much about the council dynamics as it was about the agenda. I was quickly filled in on the dynamics, the factions, and the greatest hits of arguments and scandals.
I don’t say this to dunk on past members of Brighton council. This seems to be a worldwide dynamic at this point: politics has become more polarized and caustic. Politicians are incentivized to tear down their opponents, and often receive horrendous abuse from the public. And we not only tend to accept this as the state of things, we normalize it and defend it as though it is just how politics is, even how it should be. I was told during my 2022 run that I didn’t have thick enough skin to be on council, as though I should naturally expect to be abused, and that I should bow out if I couldn’t be cut without bleeding.
I’m very, very pleased to report that, though I still do bleed if you cut me, I haven’t bled much this term. We haven’t been without conflict, by any means! But overall there’s been a clear and earnest desire among us all to work together for the good of our community, and we have avoided disrespectful behaviour and cutting words altogether. I sometimes like to joke that we “made politics boring again,” in part because we don’t have large crowds coming to watch us fight. I want to stress that this isn’t just because we’re all naturally lovely and kind people, while past councillors were not; almost half of our council was on some of those past councils too! Rather, we have all made a regular effort to connect with one another, support each other, and discuss any personal issues in private. As in any committed relationship, it takes work to make it work.
But the work is paying off. Not only do we have one of the most congenial councils around, we have been incredibly productive. Issues that have been in limbo for over a decade, like our wastewater treatment plant, are decided and moving forward. It was not easy for us to do that–we even waded through five years’ worth of documents and emails to examine the evolution of the issue–but we were able to transcend the past arguments and make a decision for the Brighton of today and tomorrow, and now work is well underway. At the same time we’ve initiated several new projects and programs and committees that we wouldn’t have had time for if we hadn’t been able to work together as well as we have been.
So I’m tremendously proud of my own conduct this term, and that of my colleagues. We knew from the beginning of the term that we couldn’t take our status as a team for granted, and we successfully nurtured that teamwork throughout the term. My hope is that we’ve set a high bar for the next council to exceed.
Recognizing the limits of our roles, knowing when to defer to staff, and finding ways to engage and empower the public to contribute to our community outside the purview of municipal government
I spent the first year of this term learning about the extent of my role as a councillor, including the limits, of which there are many. Some of those limits are formal and legal in nature, others are conceptual and relational. A key relationship, that I alluded to in this part of my 2022 campaign platform, is the relationship between council and staff.
One of the ways that I learned about that was through some formal education. I took the Municipal Administration Program from the Association of Municipal Managers, Clerks and Treasurers of Ontario, a series of four courses that are often suggested as standard training for municipal administrative staff. One of the key themes that came up over and over again in that training was the relationship between staff and council: the line between us can sometimes be fine, and needs to be clearly defined from both sides. I learned so much that I ended up also taking the Municipal Law, Accounting, and HR programs, completing the Diploma in Municipal Administration this past December. I now have the formal training of a municipal Clerk.
Does that mean that I’m on par with our Clerk or Deputy Clerk? Not a chance! Even aside from their greater experience, they are the relevant expert on all clerking matters, and I defer to them on all such things. My knowledge helps me understand their decisions and reports, and makes me a better councillor because of it, but there is no scenario in which I overrule them on a matter that falls under their authority.
Similarly, I work as a REALTOR® and planning consultant, and spend a lot of time reading, interpreting, and advising people about zoning by-laws, official plans, and provincial planning regulations. There have been times when I disagree with the way that planners, including our own planners here in Brighton, interpret the Planning Act. But it’s my role to ask questions, and then to accept the answers provided by our staff. To do otherwise would be to undermine the role of staff, which is not only incredibly disrespectful, it’s also a recipe for getting nothing done. If council does not respect staff enough to accept their reports (which have been vetted by the CAO or senior staff before coming to council) as fact, then we might as well all stay home because there’s no longer any basis for making decisions. We make decisions based on the facts as they are provided to all of us, so if one member of council has a concern that a report is incomplete or inaccurate then we can ask for more information, but we can’t make good collective decisions with conflicting or uneven information.
I’m happy to say that, on the whole, we’ve done a very good job this term at respecting this boundary. We have good relationships with our staff, and they tell us so. I really do feel like I’m part of a team, with staff and council both. But I know that there are many places in Ontario where staff and council have an adversarial relationship, where staff feel that they must manage council and council feels that they must overpower staff. I feel blessed to be part of such a mutually respectful team.
And that’s also true of the way that we engage with residents and local nonprofits. When I chaired the Brighton Homelessness Task Force, I learned a lot about just how many volunteers and community organizations we have here in Brighton, and how much they serve as the glue that holds our society together. While volunteering opportunities at the municipality are limited to committees, we’ve committed to doing more as a municipality to supporting the volunteers in our community. We already have a great annual volunteer recognition event, but we’re looking at ways to better improve our community grants system, committees, and partnerships to help volunteerism thrive here. This will be one of my major points of focus in the coming term, should I be re-elected.
Mapping the community’s assets, issues, and efforts so that every department, nonprofit, association, and individual can see where good work is being done, how they can contribute, and where there are points of overlap, conflict, or synergy in their efforts
Asset mapping is something that I have not been able to initiate this term, though it is one of the recommendations I wrote into the report of the Brighton Homelessness Task Force (linked above), and council agreed to implement those recommendations. I will be looking to see those recommendations, including asset mapping, included in the Strategic Plan and work plans next term.
Asset mapping is something I’ve been advocating for in many arenas for a long time. It’s a tool for identifying who’s out there and what connects them, so that we can encourage collaboration across an entire sector. I started advocating for asset mapping in the social services sector across the county long before I was on council, as there are seemingly endless groups and collaboration tables without a clear sense of where they overlap or how they might be needlessly competing for resources (I’ve sat on a lot of them over the past several years, often with the same people from one group to another!). I now sit on a committee of Northumberland County that is working to rewrite the Community Safety and Well-Being Plan, and has recently hired the Centre for Healthy Communities at Loyalist College to help us with that process. Asset mapping is one of their strengths, so I look forward to seeing how that will play out in the sector.
Similarly, I’ve been advocating for asset mapping in the agricultural sector in Northumberland for a few years now with the Northumberland County Food Policy Council. In that capacity I’ve recently joined with a project that is also being supported by the Centre for Healthy Communities, and that will also include asset mapping as part of defining and envisioning sustainable food systems in our region. This is a volunteer project that centres farmers but also includes some politicians, economists, health workers, and community organizers, and serves as a model for how local governments can work well with residents to support local communities and economies. Council recently approved my motion to have us regularly appoint a member of council to the Food Policy Council, starting next term. If I’m re-elected, I will volunteer to be the one appointed; if I am not the one appointed, I will work to support the councillor who is.
On the whole, then, I’m very proud of the work that I’ve done to improve collaboration in Brighton this term. But I see much work still to be done, particularly with regard to supporting residents and volunteers. If you’re interested in this topic, I highly recommend you checking out the book The Connected Community by Cormac Russell (it’s in our library!). This book gives a great introductory look at a movement called Asset-Based Community Development, and it’s a model that I am trying to slowly incorporate into the way that we operate in Brighton.