{"id":36322,"date":"2025-05-22T14:06:28","date_gmt":"2025-05-22T18:06:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=36322"},"modified":"2025-05-29T17:11:59","modified_gmt":"2025-05-29T21:11:59","slug":"social-media-use-strong-mayor-powers-keeping-integrity-commissioner-busy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/social-media-use-strong-mayor-powers-keeping-integrity-commissioner-busy\/","title":{"rendered":"Social media use, Strong Mayor Powers keeping Integrity Commissioner busy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Social media use and many of the unknowns surrounding the use of Strong Mayor Powers has kept Aurora\u2019s Integrity Commissioner with much to do over the last two years, according to Janice Atwood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Atwood of Principles Integrity serves as Aurora\u2019s Integrity Commissioner, a position which provides advice to elected officials on ethics matters and evaluates complaints levelled against elected officials and municipal staff by members of the public.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She presented her most recent report on activities to Council at the Committee level last week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since she last reported to Council two years ago, Atwood said she and the Principles team have responded to 17 separate complaints from members of the public, with three matters still before them. Of the complaints that have been evaluated, none have warranted a report to the public, she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf the facts, as alleged, are proven true, would in fact not breach the Code, then we typically do not proceed with a public report, but rather we conclude with a disposition letter back to the complainant to explain why we will not be proceeding. We provide\u2026a summary of that, including the explanation and the reasons to the respondent members so that they understand as well that there has been a complaint [and] the nature of it, and these are the reasons we\u2019re not proceeding on the matter,\u201d she explained. \u201cWe don\u2019t treat it as a public report, but, on the other hand, we don\u2019t treat it as confidential \u2013 it\u2019s simply from us to the individual complainant, the individual respondent.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While these matters don\u2019t come as public reports, Atwood\u2019s presentation shone light on the general nature of these complaints, with social media use proving a prevailing trend in many municipalities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She warned elected members who are active on social media to be \u201ccautious\u201d and not \u201carbitrarily block or mute others without notice or justification\u201d and that things which wouldn\u2019t be said publicly in a meeting about another member shouldn\u2019t be said on social media.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOne should be equally respectful on social media as they would be in person or in a public forum,\u201d said Atwood, noting other issues that came before her related to \u201clack of diligent attendance\u201d at Boards, \u201calleged conflicts of interest where we found none\u201d, and missteps in the use of procedural bylaws.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe have also seen concerns arise out of exercise of Strong Mayor Powers,\u201d she continued, adding that given the recent application of Strong Mayor Powers by the Provincial Government, there is still much to be \u201cadjudicated or determined\u201d in how they are exercised across Ontario.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOne [thing we could say] is that mayors perhaps ought to have regard for the previous decisions or positions of Council when exercising their Strong Mayor powers,\u201d she said. \u201cThere\u2019s nothing in writing on this, but we think it\u2019s probably good policy at some point and might make its way into, for example, the language of a Code of Conduct or a Procedural Bylaw or something of that effect, just really urging mayors to at least have regard for the work that\u2019s been deliberated by Council in exercising their Strong Mayor Power.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Looking over the use of Strong Mayor Powers across Ontario, Atwood said that it\u2019s \u201call over the map\u201d and whether this can be attributed to the powers or not, it has been a \u201cvery active term of Council in many municipalities\u201d from their perspective.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe have 60 municipal clients and we see all sorts of levels of activities,\u201d said Atwood, responding to questions from Ward 1 Councillor Ron Weese on how Aurora fared compared to other municipalities on the complaint front. \u201cSome, from our perspective, cause us to be extremely active and others we hardly have the opportunity to interact at all with except for bringing an annual report. I would say you (Aurora) are in that upper tier of busy-ness from our perspective, but not the highest in terms of level of activity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI think it comes from having an active citizenry who is very engaged, and I do think there\u2019s also a very high level of activity with social media and that sometimes can drive activity that we end up seeing something, a concern raised. [In] some municipalities, Councillors have very little social media activity and others it\u2019s very active. I think Aurora falls into that other category.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the social media front, Ward 2 Councillor Rachel Gilliland said that with \u201ca lot of the recent stuff going on in the world,\u201d people stress and sometimes \u201cit does come out within municipal politics [and] Provincial and Federal as well\u201d, and she was \u201cgrateful\u201d to have an Integrity Commissioner on hand to assist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That said, however, she said it would be nice to have a chart or key drivers presented to Council to get a better idea of \u201ccomplaint-driven data.\u201d She also asked Atwood to weigh in on whether she felt social media and Strong Mayor powers have \u201creally elevated the temperament of whether it\u2019s community or within Council and staff\u201d over the term of the report.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Atwood said she didn\u2019t know whether she would say Strong Mayor Powers have been an activity driver, but conceded both these powers and social media have been factors in \u201csome of our activity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSocial media certainly is a factor. I don’t know that it’s any greater in the past two years than it was in the previous, let’s say, term. One of the things I think that has driven our activity and this is just really anecdotal, it’s not data necessarily statistically, I haven’t analyzed the statistics, but certainly from my sort of vantage point, I would say what we see is a bit of\u2026 contagion when people see certain activities elsewhere, they want to get on board, and some of that drives a lot of activity that comes to our doorstep.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOften when I think citizenry are agitated about things, the only contact they may have is at the local level. They don’t always have the ability to reach higher even though their concerns may be caused by higher events. So, I think sometimes you folks are on the front line.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Atwood and her team are currently working on a draft Social Media Policy for the Town of Aurora, which she said she anticipates coming to Council before the end of June.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Social media use and many of the unknowns surrounding the use of Strong Mayor Powers has kept Aurora\u2019s Integrity Commissioner with much to do over the last two years, according to Janice Atwood. Atwood of Principles Integrity serves as Aurora\u2019s Integrity Commissioner, a position which provides advice to elected officials on ethics matters and evaluates […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36322","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-9rQ","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-15 07:26:22","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36322","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36322"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36322\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36323,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36322\/revisions\/36323"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36322"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36322"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}