A meeting about a potential Ontario Hockey League expansion in Chatham-Kent had some councillors calling it offside.
Councillor Rhonda Jubenville brought up the meeting held last week between municipal officials and OHL Commissioner Bryan Crawford, asking for clarification on whether the meeting actually happened, and who from the municipality was in attendance.
“I can confirm there was a meeting with the OHL and several councillors did attend, and the mayor and I believe the chief administrative officer (CAO),” said Acting CAO David Taylor.
“It was an early exploratory conversation, just to really understand the OHL has some potential expansion plans and things like that.”
Jubenville expressed she felt “caught off guard” by this, and questioned why only a select number of councillors were invited to attend and how the attendees were selected.
“I as understood anyways, set up that a few interested councillors were contacted about the opportunity, but I will certainly take your feedback and will speak with administration about that. Making sure everyone has the same information about it,” said Taylor.
Councillor Alysson Storey also questioned Mayor Darrin Canniff on the OHL meeting and how the seven councillors were selected to attend the meeting.
“The councillors had expressed an interested in the arena or moving forward,” said Canniff.
“We couldn’t have a full council meeting so I wanted to make sure some councillors heard. All this stuff will be repeated 15 times over cause there is no decision being made this council term. There’s no way on earth we are ever getting anywhere close to that by election time.”
Storey called the lack of transparency about the meeting “not okay.”
“Are these people you think are going to be favourable to a project versus those who are not?” said Storey.
“How are we deciding who gets to sit at these tables for these discussions and who doesn’t.”
Councillor Brock McGregor, who attended the OHL meeting, reiterated that no more than half of council can attend a meeting before it is considered a council meeting and that many meetings happen between various members of council and the community outside of council.
“The mayor talked about it on the radio, it’s been in the newspaper, I don’t think that anything has been non-transparent. And I think those allegations or assertions maybe don’t match the spirit of those types of meetings and the work that is done in the municipality.”
Taylor, as acting CAO, said he would take the councillors feedback to administration, and make sure all information is shared with council.
“To be 100 percent clear, no decisions were made. I know there were some questions also about was money dedicated to it, or was there any promises or assurances. No. It was just a listening and understanding type session,” said Taylor.
