Adam Bramburger
Beaver Staff
Lennox and Addington County staff will assist lower tier municipalities by organizing a county-wide education program for people interested in running in this fall’s municipal election.
At last Wednesday’s regular meeting, the County’s chief administrative officer Brenda Orchard reported to council that in her meeting with her lower tier counterparts, they requested Lennox and Addington take a lead on a joint education program for potential candidates.
“Typically, we don’t do elections… but we’d be more than happy to organize that and support it if it’s something you think you might want, but I would like a motion from this council because elections are typically a lower-tier issue,” Orchard explained.
Councillor Marg Isbester stated she appreciated the offer and believed it would be of assistance to the four municipalities as their own staff typically get busy around election time.
“Our clerks during the election are just going nuts checking on voters’ lists and making sure they have their ducks in a row,” she said. “Often, when people run for council, they forget we are in a two-tier system and they can use that education on what their responsibilities are.”
Isbester said she’d move the sessions would go forward and added councillors could also look at directing staff to arrange the programming to meet specific timelines.
Ric Bresee stated he supported the motion, but he didn’t want to constrain County staff with rigid timelines because he didn’t know their workloads and what the program might entail. Isbester replied that her only concern was with nominations opening Tuesday, a tight timeline might be the only way to ensure the education program reached its target audience and did some good.
Orchard said her thought was the municipalities could collaborate to hold the sessions in June, which would allow time to secure speakers and to advertise to would-be attendees.
Warden Bill Lowry said he felt the program was a worthy venture as it might end up training people who would be sitting at the County Courthouse one day.
“There’s a great need in education in governance,” he said. “We can all learn. There are people who have made a career in teaching this. I think it’s worth the time. We should try it this time around and see.”
He also added that bringing all the municipal clerks together would allow them to make connections and it could add new synergies that make the politics of the county run a bit more smoothly.
Councillor Eric Smith wondered about how the sessions would be marketed and if people would necessarily connect it to their local municipalities. Orchard replied the advertisement was going to be less about who is putting the session on and more of a collaborative effort all municipalities could promote.
Gord Schermerhorn asked what metrics would be considered in deciding whether the session is successful.
“Attendance is one and whether it has changed people’s minds is another,” Orchard said. “We want to know if the information we provided answers the questions they had. Did we give them enough information to answer the questions they had? We’ll want to know four years from now what made a difference to somebody.”
Nominations opened Tuesday and they will run until July 27. Nominations must be turned into clerks of respective lower-tier municipalities. Candidates must be eligible to vote in their municipality. They’re also required to receive the endorsement of 25 other voters and post a fee of $200 to run for the head of council or $100 to run for another position on a council or a seat as a school board trustee. Trustee candidates do not require endorsements.