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Garisto complains at lack of support from Council

May 12, 2016   ·   0 Comments

Councillor Nick Garisto was not happy with his fellow Orangeville councillors Monday night after putting forth a number of proposals and recommendations, none of which were accepted or supported by Council.

Extremely disappointed at the lack of support he had received, Mr. Garisto said he is disappointed in the council that has now been together for one and a half years. “We should not attack certain members when ideas are proposed. None of my motions are supported. They are all shut down. I come up with ideas that save taxpayers money, yet you do not seem to want to work with me. I think about motions before I put them forth to council.”

Councillor Don Kidd vehemently disagreed with Mr. Garisto’s assessment. “We turned down three motions by Councillor [Sylvia] Bradley tonight, yet Councillor Bradley does not complain.”

Monday night, Councillor Garisto put forward motions to increase the Transit Committee’s membership by one member, to have a services club committee of Council, and to investigate the possibility of county-wide fire and library services.

The motion to increase the transit committee by one member had already been rejected by the committee, and some of its members say Councillor Garisto brought forth his motion to Council without telling them beforehand.

“The committee has had full membership since the April meeting, when Councillor Garisto proposed increasing the committee size by one, to include a public transit worker, who had approached the councillor,” said Committee Chair John Chamberlain, adding that the other committee members “felt we should operate with our existing full membership before increasing the size of the committee.”

At that meeting, it was also noted that although any resident interested in Transit Committee discussions can attend its meetings, the Transit member proposed by Mr. Garisto “has never attended the open committee.”

Other members of Council felt strongly that the town’s service clubs should continue in an autonomous fashion, many of the town clubs having strongly agreed with this assessment and refused to participate in Mr. Garisto’s meetings.

As for the motion to investigate having a county library service, other councillors said that while it was true that some counties such as Wellington and Simcoe have varying degrees of shared library services used by the municipalities, the Town’s library service was essential to what makes Orangeville a vibrant place to live.

They suggested that simply giving up control of this entity would be foolhardy.

Similarly, the Garisto motion to investigate having Dufferin County take over the Orangeville Fire Services failed.

Council seemed to feel the existing arrangement is currently working well for Orangeville as its neighbouring municipalities pay for the services Orangeville Fire provides.

Therefore, was no need to pursue a different arrangement at this time.

“It is not that other members are not supporting Garisto, they are not supporting the ideas he has brought forward,” Councillor Don Kidd said. “I am here to look at the information and decide how I am go to vote on it.”

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