Baie-D’Urfé councilor exits with bombshell resignation letter

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Baie-D’Urfé will be holding a byelection in the coming months to replace Janet Ryan, the longest serving member of town council who abruptly resigned last week.

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Ryan did not go quietly. She dropped a bombshell in her letter of resignation by saying she stepped down after 17 years on council because the town’s bureaucracy is now driving the agenda at town hall, instead of duly elected officials.

Ryan referred to a recent op-ed (Local Democracy Is Worth Fighting For) in the Montreal Gazette by Sue Montgomery, the former mayor of the CDN-NDG borough who wrote about her own very public battle with the borough’s bureaucracy

“(Montgomery) goes on to talk about ‘a powerful bureaucratic machine that should be there to support us in our efforts but […] often outright blocks us’,” Ryan wrote.

“So who is charged at our town hall? It has been noted by many citizens that the size of the town’s administration has grown substantially over the last few years, while service to citizens has not improved. If anything it has deteriorated. What I have seen, from a councilor’s point of view, is an administration that has progressively taken control over council’s agenda.

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“Over the last 18 months I have also seen a council that is willing to let the administration take more and more control, and a marked lack of respect and support for council by the administration,” Ryan wrote.

She also took exception to the contract extension for town manager Nicolas Bouchard.

“In this particular mandate, the council seems to be blindly following the administration’s recommendations and to be unwilling to question whether they are the best approach,” Ryan wrote.

“I had hoped, when this council was formed last November, to be ‘the voice of experience’. Instead I have found myself slipping more and more into the role of ‘opposition councillor’, in frequent disagreement with some of my colleagues and with the administration. It is not a role that I am comfortable with.”

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Ryan, who chaired the Town Planning Advisory Committee, said she was given short shrift by the town’s administration, saying “my views and my legitimate concerns about the makeup of that committee were ignored and overridden.”

She said serving as a councilor had become personally untenable. “For the sake of my mental health and for the sake of my family, I have therefore submitted my resignation to the town clerk.”

Ryan declined an interview request to comment on her resignation letter, which was posted on a local community Facebook page.

Baie-D’Urfé Mayor Heidi Ektvedt also said she had no comment on Ryan’s assertions that the bureaucracy was calling the shots at town hall.

In a release, Ektvedt “thanked councilor Ryan for her many years of service to the community.”

“Council will have to make a decision to assign the responsibilities that councilor Ryan had to another member of the council to ensure continuity of operations,” the release said.

Ektvedt did not have an exact date for the byelection to replace Ryan, who was first elected to council in 2005 under former mayor Maria Tutino.

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