Bruce County council was fairly decisive in choosing whether or not to extend the terms for warden and deputy warden.
During the council meeting on September 5, county staff brought forward a discussion for a change to extend the length of term for warden and deputy warden from one year to two.
The rationale was that with the current term length of one year, elections would need to be carried out during a single term of council.
Bruce County Deputy Warden and Saugeen Shores Mayor Luke Charbonneau was the first to speak on the topic.
He initially said that if a change were to be made, then it should go into effect at the beginning of a council term, rather than in the middle of a term, so if they decided to make the change.
Charbonneau also said that the benefit of having single-year terms for warden and deputy warden were to have flexibility.
“We’ve had multiple-year wardens… at that’s fine, because they’ve been re-elected,” he says. “And that’s fine, but I think it gives some good flexibility if you want more members be the warden in any particular term, then you can do that and it gives an opportunity for more members to do that job. It’s a big job, being warden in addition to being mayor, and it may be a job that members only want to do for a year in order to spread that workload out.”
He then said that he wasn’t particularly supportive of making the change.
Other councillors, including Huron-Kinloss mayor Don Murray, agreed with Charbonneau, saying that it would be better to keep a warden’s term at one year allowed for flexibility, and didn’t get onerous for whoever was selected as warden because of the big commitment.
Kincardine Mayor Ken Craig said that he supported the change to a two-year term for the sake of consistency and being able to be warden and hit a stride while filling the position.
Council voted in favour of keeping the warden’s and deputy warden’s terms at one year.
Previous wardens who were re-elected for a second term since 2010, include Mitch Twolan, Janice Jackson, and the current Warden Chris Peabody.