Municipalities throughout Ontario will be making adjustments as they enter what's called a lame duck period after the closing dates for nomination in this fall's municipal election.
Huron County CAO Meighan Wark explains the objective of the lame duck period is to protect incoming councils from being constrained by onerous decisions of a previous council in the last few months of their term. Nominations must be submitted by July 27 and the municipal election is on October 22nd. That means that there are restrictions on some of the decisions that might otherwise be made by council.
Wark says the delegation of some of the authority needs to go to the CAO for that period of time and in the case of staffing, it needs to go to the warden. Wark says there are also some restrictions on council regarding financial decisions during the lame duck period. Generally speaking, there are not any expenditures that are not included in the budget so, really best practice is an expenditure wouldn't go through if it hadn't been included in the budget in the first place.
“So the report that we brought forward indicated that the delegation of some of the authority needs to go to the CAO for that period of time and in the case of staffing it needs to go to the warden," says Wark. "Generally speaking there are not any expenditures that are not included in the budget so, really best practice is an expenditure wouldn't go through if it hadn't been included in the budget in the first place.”
