Mayor cracking down on councillors’ disparaging comments that derailed 6-hour meeting

After a nearly six-hour council meeting, the mayor reprimanded councillors for unprofessional exchanges. CTV London’s Daryl Newcombe reports.

City councillors who cross the line during heated debates are straining relationships and slowing decision-making at city hall.

On Tuesday, Mayor Josh Morgan warned councillors that he will crack down on the use of disparaging comments directed at city staff, stakeholders, and each other.

“[You] make it sound like something untoward is happening,” a clearly frustrated Morgan said while resolving a dispute over a councillor’s choice of words. “That’s what I’ve talked about before, and I’m going to engage on these things a little more clearly from now on.”

The council meeting lasted over six hours.

It’s the latest council meeting needlessly extended by councillors using politically charged language that triggers an objection from another councillor (formally called a Point of Privilege).

Rules that govern council meetings require the mayor to immediately rule on a Point of Privilege and remedy the situation, “despite other pending business currently before Council.”

At the same time members of the public are left waiting in the gallery each time council’s progress through the agenda stalls.

The mayor suggests that crossing the line can impact relationships with city staff, municipal agencies, and stakeholders.

“We can have lots of debate, but that does not need to be done with charged language or veiled accusations,” Morgan told CTV News after the meeting. “So I called that out today, and I’m going to continue to do that. I’m going to expect the committee chairs to do the same.”

During Tuesday’s council meeting, the mayor had to interrupt debate about a funding request from the Old East Village Business Improvement Area (BIA).

Coun. David Ferreira expressed concern that he had yet to see an accounting of how the BIA has utilized COVID Relief Funding which expires at the end of 2026.

“When I asked for this transparency from the Old East Village, I got a letter back that gives me a fog. I don’t even know how to classify it. And it really actually hurts my confidence even more,” Ferreira said.

Coun. Susan Stevenson, who sits on the OEV BIA Board, stood up and called a Point of Privilege, “Saying your confidence being shaken, I think, is a disservice to the [city] staff who oversee this, to the BIA, and to the councillor that sits on that [board].”

Later in the meeting, Coun. Sam Trosow took exception with Deputy Mayor Shawn Lewis’ comments that presumed the results of a hypothetical appeal to the Ontario Land Tribunal before council even voted on a high-rise development on Pack Road.

Trosow was later scolded by the mayor for implying that the staff report recommending approval of the Pack Road development was not signed by the planner who wrote it.

Morgan interrupted the meeting to allow the Deputy City Manager to confirm that the report was, in fact, recommended by the Director of Planning and Development.

“I’m actually going to ask all councilors, every single one in this room, to assume that staff of the corporation and staff of the BIA’s are public service members doing things because they believe it is the right thing to do, [and] are doing things authentically and appropriately,” the mayor added.

The councillors accused of making disparaging comments and those raising Points of Privilege tend to change based on the issue being debated.

The increasingly common behaviour has involved many, but not all members of council.

Council now has a brief period to cool off before committee meetings resume Aug. 11.