Council critic Don Rennick lasted less than a minute last night as he tried to give a presentation to a virtual town hall meeting, before Mayor Al McDonald cut his mic and told him his presentation was over.
It's the latest volley in a long-standing battle between the two. Back in 2016 McDonald banned Rennick from speaking to council for saying, "Staff has been misleading Council, and Council has been unable to grasp this fact."
See: You're out of order!
Rennick famously attended the next council meeting wearing duct tape over his mouth in protest.
The battle escalated this spring when McDonald told city staff to no longer answer any of Rennick's questions, but instead, force him to file a Freedom of Information request to get even the simplest information.
See: City Hall tells citizen activist to go FOI himself
The latest confrontation was last night. Rennick says he offered an olive branch to McDonald, but in the end, was set up.
Rennick had filed his whole presentation to the city clerk beforehand so if they didn't like it they could say so beforehand.
"I specifically said I don't want to run afoul of the procedural (conduct) bylaw. Show this to the mayor and if there is any issue with it let me know."
In the email to the clerk, Karen McIsaac he wrote, "If the content or language is not acceptable to the Mayor please let me know before the meeting commences."
The clerk's response was to send Rennick a copy of the bylaw.
"The problem is, is it's not my opinion that matters, it's McDonald's because he's sitting there like a pharaoh on a throne issuing edicts. He's judge, jury and executioner. There's no rebuttal to what he says. As soon as he finished his little speech, which was obviously prepared, they cut off the audio. The video never did work. For everybody else that presented the video was working fine, and mine didn't work."
Rennick said he tested his computer beforehand to eliminate any glitches. "I know it works."
It was all part of the setup Rennick says.
"The clerk could have come back and said, 'Look, McDonald doesn't like that. He doesn't agree with what you are saying.If you say that he's going to cut you off so don't bother coming on.'"
Rennick maintains McDonald wants "to show everybody what a kind and loving benevolent dictator he is, looking after his employees regardless if they are doing the job or not. He's going to stick by them because he doesn't have the qualifications to argue with them."
And he doesn't see an end to the conflict anytime soon, lamenting the mayor has made it personal.
"He is making it personal because he cannot mount any cohesive arguments concerning the issues that I am raising. This, of course, is the favoured method used by those who cannot support their positions and in an effort to save face decide to attack the messenger."
BayToday reached out to Mayor McDonald for comment on Rennick's actions but received no response.
"The issues I have with the way the City is being run would be receiving the same criticism regardless of who was Mayor or who was on council," Rennick explains.
"They are just screwing taxpayers over so badly and staff is running the whole city, and to suggest they have the taxpayer's best interest at heart is ridiculous. They're going to look after themselves first, with average salaries of $100,000 each."
You can't judge for yourself because the City isn't going to post the meeting anywhere, and in fact, has taken the first town hall meeting down.
You can hear the Rennick-McDonald confrontation below.
In explaining why the video wasn't posted, Gord Young, Communications Officer, in an email to BayToday said, "It was brought to our attention that the City’s procedural bylaw specifies that town halls will not be recorded, As such, the Sept. 10th town hall was removed from YouTube, and Thursday’s meeting was not recorded.
"The procedural bylaw was created prior to Covid-19 and it was never really contemplated that the town halls would be held electronically. It was envisioned that they would be held at different locations in the community like Memorial Gardens."
