The Town of Tecumseh has joined surrounding municipalities to oppose the strong mayor powers expansion.
Town council met Tuesday morning for a special meeting, where council voted in favour of sending a letter to the provincial government stating Tecumseh would like to be removed from the list of municipalities for this legislation.
Last week, the Ontario government announced the expansion of strong mayor powers to leaders in 169 more municipalities, which would give mayors the ability to override some council decisions, fire and hire senior staff, veto bylaws among more.
These powers were put in place to offer tools to help heads of council cut red tape and speed up the delivery of key shared municipal-provincial priorities such as housing, transit and infrastructure in their municipalities.
Tecumseh is not the first municipality to oppose this expansion. The Town of Amherstburg, the Town of Essex, and the Town of Kingsville have openly stated they will be asking the province to be removed from the list.
Tecumseh's deputy mayor, Joe Bachetti, says there is concern this would undermine the democratic process.
"In Tecumseh and our area here has had a strong tradition of collective decision making, and basically we want to preserve that for the benefit of our residents. And that's why we called that special meeting, we submitted the comments, and hopefully the province will review them and take us off the list. We don't want it. It's almost like a thank you, but no thanks."
He says these powers aren't needed in small towns.
"They can direct council to consider specific matters related to housing and infrastructure, you know propose new by-laws connected to provincial priorities, or veto certain by-laws. So there's a lot of things under strong mayors that may work in larger cities, but in small towns, there is no need for that. It's very undemocratic, and at the end of the day we have to respect local democracy."
Bachetti says he's glad to see other municipalities putting forward similar motions.
"They're all united in terms of having that united front that they're sending notices of motions, they're sending comments that they want to be removed from the list, and that things are working well and we hold them to that. So we respect that. And in our situation here, the mayor in Tecumseh, he's also indicated that he will not be using them."
Every municipality in the Essex County was added to the list aside from Pelee Island.
The expanded powers are set to go into effect as of May 1, 2025.