Mayor of dysfunctional municipality quits over infighting
Tanya Cloutier says some Lakeland Ridges councillors seem intent on continuing feuds when they’re reinstated
The mayor of a troubled rural municipality in western New Brunswick has quit over what she says is chronic infighting and division between her and several councillors.
Those divisions prompted the provincial government to take over the running of Lakeland Ridges last year and have now prompted Tanya Cloutier to step down.
"I'm not doing this to turn my back on you," Cloutier said, addressing residents via an interview with CBC News.
"I'm actually doing this to let you know that this type of behaviour should not be allowed in any level of government."
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The elected council is supposed to be on a path to reinstatement by now following the development of a plan by a provincial supervisor.
But Cloutier said she recently concluded that the province's intervention was superficial and had established artificial and over-optimistic deadlines, such as having council start to hold meetings again in February or March.
She said a group of councillors continued to complain and badmouth her, seemingly intent on resuming their difficult behaviour once they were reinstated, such as attempting to fire municipal staff and sell off assets.
"I felt that there was no real change that was coming because of the outbursts and stuff that were still happening," she said.
Coun. Randy Stairs, one of five councillors who convened a public meeting last fall about the situation, refused a CBC request for an interview on Monday.
But he said in a brief phone conversation that the transition back to council authority was getting better, and it was possible things would be more harmonious when a new mayor is elected in a byelection to replace Cloutier.
Asked if he planned to run for mayor, Stairs said, "Oh, God, no."
Lakeland Ridges is a sprawling rural municipality of 2,600 people taking in the former villages of Meductic and Canterbury as well as several rural areas between the St. John River and the Canada-U.S. border.
It was created as part of the provincewide local government reform on Jan. 1, 2023.
The province's Control of Municipalities Act allows the government to appoint a supervisor when a municipal council "is not able to carry on the business of a council."
A council meeting last June didn't go ahead when councillors couldn't agree on an agenda.
The two municipal office staff, chief administrative officer and clerk Susie Patterson and deputy clerk-treasurer Lana Sharpe, went out on medical leave. Another council meeting scheduled for July was cancelled because a temporary clerk still wasn't in place.
The supervisor was appointed not long after that.
Some residents suggested the dispute was driven by people who opposed local government reform and didn't want to see their communities folded into a larger municipality.
Cloutier, a former mayor of Canterbury, said there were complaints, for example, that a local doctor's one-evening-a-week clinic was happening there and not elsewhere — even though the doctor lived in that area and it was the best way to make it convenient for her.
Last November, supervisor Greg Lutes submitted his report to the province, a document the government is refusing to release.
Cloutier said Monday that it hasn't even been disclosed to her and the councillors, making it impossible for them to know what needed to change.
The province did publicly release a two-page "transition plan" that included the hiring of mediators and an updated code of conduct.
A note on the plan said mediation "to resolve individual issues and interpersonal relationships" would probably need to continue past Dec. 15.
"The speed at which conflict can be resolved depends upon the complexity of the issue, the individuals involved, and their ability to find consensus to conclude a resolution," it said.
Cloutier acknowledged she had made mistakes, but, "I think the public understands when a mistake is made, then you work as a group together to try to fix it, not point fingers, have outbursts, go to the the local coffee shops and start speaking poorly about your mayor."
In a December interview, Premier Blaine Higgs, who grew up in the area and owns a summer property in Lakeland Ridges, said the dispute appeared to be rooted in "strong independence from competing communities."
"It's the very reason that we have regionalization, to get over that and say, 'How great can we be together?'" he said.
"There are some unique challenges there because of strong opinions of of individual communities. We've got to look bigger than that."
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