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Mono council will revisit vote on land for Bruce Trail

February 20, 2025   ·   0 Comments

By JAMES MATTHEWS

Even municipal councils are entitled to claim a mulligan and revisit their vote on an issue after they were rapped on the knuckles.

The issue in question pertains to an October 2024 council vote related to a piece of municipal property the Bruce Trail Conservancy (BTC) wanted to include as part of its trail network.

Mayor John Creelman said during council’s Feb. 11 meeting that “we will readdress it.”

Three road sections remain on the trail in the south half of Mono, each about one kilometre long. One of the properties the BTC needs to fulfill its plans is owned by the Town of Mono. Another is privately owned by an Ottawa resident who hasn’t seen the parcel of land in about 25 years.

Those properties, along with a third that’s in the works, will allow the club to improve the trail.

The BTC asked during an Oct. 22, 2024, meeting for the municipality’s permission to use its parcel of land on which to build part of the trail. The municipality was asked to investigate if the property is needed by the town. If it’s deemed to be surplus land, the conservancy expressed an interest in buying it.

Mono resident Elaine Kehoe took issue with the fact that Deputy Mayor Fred Nix participated in the council vote on the BTC request. She said Nix, who would declare a conflict during previous instances when the trail group would come up in meetings, didn’t recuse himself from the discussion.

In fact, Nix put forward the motion and argued in favour of the BTC developing the portion of the trail without further public consultation, she said.

“I was at that meeting and declared that Nix was in contravention of the Municipal Act and had a conflict of interest,” Kehoe said during the Feb. 11 council meeting. “Will council rescind the hand-shake deal with BTC and start the process over, taking into account public input?”

Creelman said on Feb. 11 that one option is to erase the vote and have another without Nix’s participation. Another avenue would be to have a period of public consultation.

Creelman said he took exception to Kehoe’s use of the term “hand-shake deal.”

Quite simply, council’s decision was not such a deal.

“It would be a memorandum of understanding with the Bruce Trail and ourselves with regard to using our property for purposes of expanding their trail network,” Creelman said.

“With respect, that term was used by council at that (October) meeting,” Kehoe said.

“It’s certainly an informal agreement,” Creelman said. “I don’t think it rises to bylaw status. I think there was an indication from staff that there should be something more concrete than simply a hand-shake deal.”

Michael Dunmore, the town’s CAO, said there is a recommendation in legislation that allows for almost a re-do. Provided there’s no financial impact, council could revisit the motion.

“Council could re-discuss and re-vote on the request from the Bruce Trail (Conservancy) to utilize the property in question,” Dunmore said.

“When readdressing it we take into account that they should not be given any favour over the fact that they’ve already built the trail, should that be the decision to go forward that would automatically give them the right to purchase the surplus land which they indicated they would like to do,” Kehoe said.

So despite the BTC having established the trail since October, Kehoe wants anybody in the public to buy the surplus land.

“Our (October) decision was distinctly not to start the process of declaring that land surplus,” Creelman said. “It was simply to allow access for purposes of a trail.”

He said the next step, if there is one, would be to declare the land surplus.

“Which is an entirely different issue, different process,” the mayor said. “There are various steps that need to be taken in terms of declaration of surplus land. But we chose not to go down that road at the time that we discussed it back in October.”

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