Brampton Mayor Brown urges councillors to ‘own your mistake and move on’ after illegal motion
Published July 28, 2022 at 3:44 pm
Brampton Mayor Patrick Brown says he’s ready to “move on” and work with councillors who backed an illegal motion after weeks infighting and missed meetings.
“I want everyone to come back to work, and I’m willing to work with anyone who will put Brampton first,” Brown said in an interview with inSauga.com publisher Khaled Iwamura on Wednesday (July 27).
Brampton city council business has been put on hold as councillors have missed 10 consecutive meetings in recent weeks following a controversial and illegal motion motion which would have pre-emptively appointed an interim councillor before the seast was declared vacant.
Council members on both sides of the motion have missed meetings, but Brown says the meeting he and his council supporters boycotted were not “properly constituted meetings” because the motion would have put the city at risk of “massive taxpayer exposure.”
“We didn’t miss meetings, we followed the (City) Clerk’s advice,” Brown said.
Councillors Jeff Bowman, Pat Fortini, Martin Medeiros, Gurpreet Dhillon, Doug Whillans all supported the motion and have been absent from six meetings, with some councillors now on vacation or taking personal time off.
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Brown urged the vacationing councillors to return to Brampton and tackle council’s long list of delayed agenda items.
“I’m willing to move on, and, frankly, most residents that I’ve heard from are saying ‘just come back to work, own your mistake and move on’,” Brown said.
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Brown said he wants to dock the pay of the missing councillors and to cover $20,000 in legal fees from challenging the motion in court, but to do so will require at least six members present at a meeting.
“I know they’re upset that they lost their court deison, but show up,” the mayor said. “They’ve missed six meetings, and the last meeting they missed was one they called themselves.”
The next special meeting of council is scheduled for Aug. 9. There’s also a regular meeting of council on Aug. 10, and another special meeting on Aug. 15.
The council agenda is now some 1,000 pages long of reports, bylaws, motions and delegations and other matters, including an audit of the more than $600,000 in consultant fees for the lapsed Brampton U project.
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