Mass resignation on Brownsburg urban planning committee

Former committee members and council members clashed further at the Brownsburg-Chatham council meeting last Monday, March 7, as the replacement of three urban planning consultation committee members was announced, followed by the resignation of another member and the council's committee representative.

Mayor Georges Dinel initially announced during the regular meeting that Michel Guay, Alain Claveau and Daniel Cadotte were being asked to replace three members who had resigned recently.

Those resigning were Tim Clark, former mayor Bernard Dumas, and Daniel Campeau. The latter served on the committee for three years and is also the president of the Société de développement économique de Brownsburg-Chatham, an independently-managed organization that administers or owns some of the municipality's properties.

In approving the motion, Councillor André McNicoll said while he wasn't in favour of the resignation of the three former members, "there was no choice" but to approve the new ones.

As the council's representative on the committee, McNicoll then presented his own resignation to his colleagues and the public, saying he could no longer "work in the conditions" in which "political interference" continued to affect the committee.

"For the same reasons stated by those resigning members and my great disappointment toward a few elected council members who campaigned with promises of transparency and justice during their term in office, I cannot and will not represent their dictated views to influence others whose mandate is to independently evaluate homeowners' derogations and zone changes within the existing laws, without political pressures," he said, in a statement provided to The Review.

Shortly afterward, newly-appointed member Alain Claveau stood up and announced his resignation, saying he wasn't aware that the former members had resigned in protest. That resignation followed a heated discussion between Campeau and Dinel, one which highlighted the already-existing tensions that continue to polarize residents.

Dinel himself alluded to such tensions, stating the conflict between the municipality and the urban planning committee also "created a conflict between with the citizens of the municipality."

He referred in particular to last year's case of a minor zoning amendment, requested for a sugar shack, which was supported by a slim majority of council but did not receive the ultimate approval of the urban planning committee.

Council members had voted last September, by a slim margin of 4-3, to adopt a second reading of a bylaw to amend municipal zoning bylaw 058-2003, which would "permit the use of a commercial sugar shack and reception hall" in an agricultural zone, at 309, route du Canton.

Campeau replied last week that the committee could not support the amendment, as it went against the municipality's official development plan.

"We would have had to change the rules to allow it to pass," he said. "Everything works when you change the rules. Are you starting to see there's something wrong with your administration? Once we have decisions that favour one, to the detriment of another, I can't work with that."

After another resident raised the issue of political interference with Dinel, the mayor responded by saying, "When there is a zoning change request, we can make a minor derogation (to the zoning bylaw). We (municipalities) always give a chance to the applicant."

He added, "I've given a directive, and we have to give a chance to the applicant."