Trusting the Trustees
Is appointing trustees truly 'breathtaking in its arrogance'?
You may recall that last fall, we had a municipal election - well, at least the 20-something per cent of those who voted in that election should remember it anyway. Given the municipal election cycle is every four years, you can be forgiven for thinking that municipal election news may quiet down until 2026. But, due to some unforeseen circumstances, municipal politics is very much in the public eye, less than seven months after the election, specifically our local school boards. That’s because three trustee seats (two in the WRDSB and one in the WCDSB) have become vacant recently.
Fred Meissner (WRDSB: Woolwich-Wellesley) passed away earlier this month. You can read a recap of some of the lovely memories shared about Fred in Niki’s Twitter thread. Marie Snyder (WRDSB: Waterloo-Wilmot) stepped down, stating “an inability to fully participate due to health concerns”. And, Wendy Ashby (WCDSB: Kitchener-Wilmot) resigned after some were calling for her resignation due to various tweets (now deleted). In her statement, Ashby said, “I have decided to vacate my seat at this time, so that we can all return our focus back on the important work that we have dedicated ourselves to doing.”
These vacancies can be filled basically in one of two ways - holding a byelection or appointing new trustees. Appointments can mean simply appointing the runners-up in the 2022 election, or opening up the appointment process to a wider number of candidates, even including those who did not run in 2022. Likely no surprise to anyone, there has been some debate about which option to choose.
A byelection would be costly. Trustee Piatkowski said that he believes a byelection would be “prohibitively expensive”, likely costing nearly $500,000. As well, legislation requires the byelection to be held within 90 days of any vacancy, meaning folks would go to the polls this summer. That obviously competes with summer weather and plans, and would likely result in an extremely low voter turnout, especially given board trustee elections already garner minimal interest traditionally. From what I’m hearing, few people are advocating for this approach.
That leaves ‘appointment’ as the more financially-wise approach. Should we simply appoint the runners-up, the next-in-line so to speak? Or should it be opened up more widely? It’s worth noting that the board has had to deal with this issue in the past. As stated in the WR Record, “On the last three occasions when the board had a vacancy, it filled them by appointment — two through an interview process and one by appointing the first runner-up in the previous election.”
The WRDSB has already made the decision, opting for appointment by an ad hoc committee consisting of three trustees. Most trustees voted in favour of this approach, with Trustees Cody, Ramsay, and Watson opposed. While the committee will make recommendations about who should fill the vacancies, all board trustees will make the final decision.
This has angered some, including WR Record columnist Luisa D’Amato who says, “the decision by most public board trustees is breathtaking in its arrogance.” She describes it this way:
“In an astonishing display of anti-democratic culture earlier this week, trustees at the Waterloo Region District School Board decided that they — and not the voters who cast ballots last year — will decide who fills the two spots left at the public board.”
I actually want to take a moment to speak to a few of D’Amato’s comments from that article because I think they are problematic. She says, “Only three trustees — Bill Cody, Mike Ramsay and Cindy Watson — argued at a meeting Monday night that the runners-up in the election should be appointed. They were overruled by the others, who think they know better than the voters do.” She continued, “most of the other trustees decided they know better than the people who pay the bills, take the time to educate themselves, and vote.” That seems like an extreme conclusion to jump to. D’Amato assumes that the runners-up are ‘what voters want’ yet, that’s only true if you remove the votes of everyone who voted for those candidates who are no longer on the board - which, of course, does not feel very democratic either. (I’d also be curious what happens if the runner-up declines. Do you just keep moving through the list until someone accepts?)
D’Amato argues that, “less than a year has passed since voters last marked their ballots. That’s a short enough time that we can conclude the runner-up is the next person the voters wanted. That’s who should be appointed, provided they still qualify and still want the job.” It’s true that we recently heard from voters (in last fall’s election) but again, suggesting that the runners-up are who voters want only works if you choose to ignore all of the people who voted for Meissner, Snyder, and Ashby. That is absolutely an option, but let’s not pretend that it’s the ‘only democratic’ option available to us. As well, you could argue that while we are only seven months out from the last election, that leaves nearly three and a half years left to the term - so we should ensure that we identify who voters actually want to represent them.
Luisa D’Amato writes, “Public trustees have the option of running a byelection, but the public board would have to shoulder the entire cost, likely more than $500,000. The board can’t afford that.” I actually agree with D’Amato that a costly byelection in the middle of the summer isn’t appropriate. Although, on the surface at least, a byelection feels like the most democratic option, in that we’d get a chance to hear directly from voters. The fact that D’Amato outright rejects that option on the basis of cost alone demonstrates that she understands that ‘democracy’ isn’t the only consideration in this discussion - even though she argues otherwise.
One concern I have in the discussion on the best way to fill these vacancies is that some people look at who they want to fill those vacancies and then select the process that they believe will get their preferred candidate(s) into place. I think we can agree that is not the best approach.
Might it make sense for a single process to be in place (byelection, appointment of runners-up or by application) that is consistently used when a vacancy comes up? And while such an idea won’t help this current situation, it could help shape the WCDSB’s upcoming decision. As well, the same issue is likely to arise again this year as we seek to fill the Kitchener-Centre seat currently held by MPP Laura Mae Lindo. We already know one Kitchener councillor will be running in that byelection (ward 10 councillor Aislinn Clancy for the Greens), another has announced that she is seeking the NDP nomination (ward 9 councillor Debbie Chapman), and others could do the same for the Liberals and Conservatives. It seems to me that local councils would do well to establish a plan now, rather than make a decision once forced to if/when the issue lands on their plate.
So, what format would I like to see selected for future decisions? After some interesting conversations with some other local #Polinerds, I think appointments are valid. However, I don’t think we should automatically appoint the runners-up. I also don’t believe that sitting elected representatives (meaning current councillors or trustees) should be able to hand-pick who gets to sit around the council horseshoe with them. Instead, I’d advocate for a citizens’ committee that seeks out potential candidates, reviews applications, interviews candidates, and makes their recommendations. Those recommendations would be presented to council (or the board of trustees) who could then vote on the recommendations. With many details and processes to be worked out with this idea, I'd love to see local councils start soon. Otherwise, we're left in this situation where each side tries to declare they are the true champions of democracy.
Some who are passionate about politics have a tendency to declare as undemocratic any perspective that doesn’t align with their own. However, I think the rhetoric used by Luisa D’Amato in her column is unhelpful, and perhaps even harmful, as we try to navigate a challenging situation. Making claims that one’s position is the only democratic option and that any alternative action “completely overrides the democratic process,” divides people and focuses our attention on choosing sides instead of seeking practical solutions to the problem.
D’Amato ends her column by saying, “An election is a very special thing. It’s a meeting of minds between the candidate, who is out meeting people and sharing ideas, and the voter, who decides if this person is worthy of acting on his or her behalf. It’s a sacred trust that we are lucky to enjoy.” While that’s more optimistic and idealistic than how I might frame it, overall I tend to agree. However, I very much disagree with her conclusion that, “Public school trustees are now moving forward with actions that express contempt for that trust.” As Luisa says, we vote for the people who we believe to be “worthy of acting on our behalf” - so we should allow them to do exactly that.
This issue also has me wondering if ranked ballots might be helpful when addressing board or council vacancies. I know I have some Citified readers who are quite knowledgeable on the benefits and challenges of ranked ballots. I’d love to hear if you think they could be useful in these cases. Feel free to comment below! Also, what are your thoughts about citizen committees leading the appointment process? Have you seen examples of this elsewhere?
For a detailed recap of the trustee discussion on filling vacancies, I recommend reading Niki’s thread here. You can also view the meeting here.
I'm a bit skeptical about the citizens' committee approach, but only because I worry that it creates a new problem, e.g. now someone has to choose the members of this committee. I might prefer an approach that looks for ways to strengthen the level of residents' input in the current appointment process. Part of this could be through the usual "e-mail your representative," but maybe a streamlined delegation process (e.g. shorter time limit, only allow delegations from the ridings with open seats) could allow residents to express reasons in favour of their preferred candidate? This does also create an unusual situation where residents would need to provide feedback to trustees who aren't their representative, e.g. when discussing how to fill the vacancy in Waterloo-Wilmot, the most important voices are the residents of that riding, so trustees from other ridings would need to be listening to Waterloo-Wilmot residents as well.
I think this midterm-vacancies are problem that democracies always struggle with -- even when there are by-elections, they often have lower turnout so they aren't as effective as regular elections. To put things in context, in the United States, in some states vacancies in the Senate are appointed by a single individual (the Governor), so even a high-stakes political office like the U.S. Senate has less democratic approaches to filling mid-term vacancies than our local school board!
I feel the timelines probably prevent a citizens committee from being a practical approach. 90 days is not a lot of time to recruit a committee and then recruit candidates and run the process. I also wouldn't want to make the timelines longer as it's important to have a full board compliment to do the work.
It's pretty clear that there are strong factions in play at WRDSB that probably make any solution extra challenging (I watched the meeting where they decided how to proceed and every vote broke along the same 6-3 lines).