They did nothing wrong legally but got everything wrong democratically.
Last week our town council and mayor entered a secret meeting, in a private room away from the public eye, to appoint someone who didn’t run in the last election to fill a vacant seat of council.
Yes, you read that correctly. Without public consultation or a byelection, our town council decided to appoint Andrew Niven, the current chair of Tourism NOTL and the Chamber of Commerce, to council, rather than the person who finished next in the 2022 election.
The move ignored a long-standing precedent in our town to appoint the next democratically chosen runner-up.
Astonishingly — or maybe not so much any more — only two voices of reason spoke against this decision: Couns. Sandra O’Connor and Gary Burroughs.
We want to emphasize that none of this is Niven’s fault, and knowing Niven, he will likely do a great job at representing the residents of NOTL.
But that is far from the point.
The point is that our council, or at least Zalepa & Co., continues to act in a way that spits in the face of democracy and the residents of our town. And this is just another example of how five council members continue to ignore the people who voted them into their positions.
While council was within its rights to appoint someone to fill the seat per requirements of the Municipal Act — and while discussing such matters in a closed–session meeting seems to be the norm across the board in situations like this — the move has rightfully angered swaths of people in our town, who are left wondering if their voices mean anything any more.
And, really, are they wrong to question that? Based on the history of this council, in just two years, we would argue it’s become obvious the voices of the people are secondary to the enigmatic preferences of Zalepa & Co., who vote together on just about everything, as if the decisions were cooked up in a backroom cauldron of bad ideas and egos.
Objectively, the clear and obvious democratic choice, next to holding an expensive byelection, was to select the next runner-up, Allan Bisback, to fill the vacant seat.
Bisback, who lost by just 66 votes, has previous council experience, was interested in the position, has no other jobs to interfere with the time he spends working for our town (Niven has three other jobs), and notably, is the candidate the people voted for — and who beat Niven in the 2018 municipal election, by the way.
The appointment was an insult to Bisback, his campaign members and every resident of Niagara-on-the-Lake who cast a vote in the last election.
Perhaps it’s just a coincidence Bisback has differing views than the current gang of five who seem to be running our council, but it seems pretty obvious why Zalepa’s gang ignored him. It appears to be nothing more than sickening cronyism and could be seen as further evidence that most of the members of this council, especially Zalepa and his deputy, Erwin Wiens, think they know better than everyone else.
It’s part of a pattern of certain council members to ignore the voices of the people of this town.
This egregious move comes after several decisions in which town council has ignored the loud cries of residents: With the hotels at Parliament Oak and on Queen Street, in Glendale at White Oaks and for the secondary plan. The list goes on.
It also follows an Ontario Land Tribunal decision in favour of the town, which showed Zalepa and Wiens were wrong by proving de facto that not all legal challenges are losing battles at the expense of the taxpayer.
Oops, we suppose that argument is out the window now.
It saddens us that we have a majority of council that seemingly doesn’t care what residents think and acts collectively, often defending their actions with poorly justified excuses.
The only thing we can say for Zalepa & Co. is that at least they were democratically elected — even if their platforms were 180 degrees from how they’ve been voting. In many cases they have not acted at all how they told the electorate they would, which in most real-world circumstances is simply called fraud.
But alas, this decision, like some of the other poor decisions this council has made, is final and can’t be undone.
So with that, we must look to the future.
We congratulate Niven on his position and hope his voice will be a refreshing one and that he listens to the people — even if those people didn’t put him in his position.
And then we must look to 2026, when voters can decide if they want to remove people from council who seem to have forgotten who put them in their positions in the first place, or who didn’t live up to their platforms and promises.
In the meantime, we can celebrate that these decisions are all on the record for the public to see, share and be loud about.