The following article appeared in the September 11 edition of the Guelph Tribune:
At least a couple of Guelph’s new city councillors are finding the city hall terrain to be tricky when it comes to conflict-of-interest concerns.
Ward 2 councillor Ian Findlay, a longtime downtown business owner, and Ward 4 councillor Mike Salisbury, whose wife is a city bus driver, say those circumstances have complicated their lives at city hall. But with one notable exception, Findlay’s resignation from a library search committee, both men say they’ve decided not to be deterred from interests near to their hearts – Guelph Transit issues, in Salisbury’s case, and downtown revitalization, in Findlay’s.
Findlay has owned the Baker Street video store Thomas Entertainment for 25 years. He says he campaigned last year on downtown revitalization. However, he realized there could be conflict-of-interest concerns, notably regarding possible redevelopment of the Baker Street Parking Lot across from his business.
So, soon after being elected, Findlay sought legal advice from prominent local lawyer Robin-Lee Norris, and he posted her legal opinion on his city hall blog.
“Even though it was a privileged, confidential document, I wanted to ensure transparency” by posting it, he said in an interview.
Relying on Norris’s advice, Findlay has declared his position as a Baker Street business owner at committee and city council meetings on a number of downtown revitalization issues. He went on to briefly explain at those meetings why he believed he was able to take part in the debates.
One of the occasions was when the issue of free two-hour parking at downtown street meters came before council in June.
He clearly stated his position as a downtown business owner then, he says, as “I didn’t want the discussion to be railroaded by my perceived conflict of interest.”
Relying on Norris’s legal opinion, Findlay thought he was able to participate in that parking debate because it’s an issue in which he shares concerns with the entire downtown community.
Much the same goes for the issue of whether a multi-storey parking garage should be built on the city-owned Baker Street Parking Lot, he said.
“I could be perceived as pushing for it because I want parking for my customers,” he said, but he doesn’t think his customers would go into a parkade just to drop off a movie at his store.
The one issue that’s come up at council so far where he has bowed out of debates because of a perceived conflict of interest, he said, is the location for a possible new main library.
After being elected, he was named both to the library board and to a search committee looking at potential sites for a new headquarters library. But he says he resigned from the search committee after receiving Norris’s legal opinion.
City hall is currently studying that committee’s two preferred library locations – the Baker Street Parking Lot or a Macdonell Street site owned by The Co-operators.
The specific perceived conflict of interest that prompted him to resign from the search committee, and to excuse himself from library-site discussions at the library board and at council, Findlay said, is that he rents out DVDs and the library also deals in DVDs.
“The knife cuts both ways,” he noted. He could be perceived as wanting a new library on the Baker Street lot in order to attract more people to the vicinity of his video store, or he could be perceived as not wanting a library there “because it would be in competition with me.”
After council decides on a site for a new downtown library, though, he thinks he’ll be “back in the game” and able once again to participate in discussions about such matters as the library’s design.
For Findlay, opportunities to think back to Norris’s legal opinion just keep coming up – such as at council’s debate last week over whether to authorize city staff to pursue a deal with Gummer building owner Skyline Inc. to have the city subsidize redevelopment of the fire-damaged, adjacent Gummer and Victoria buildings on Douglas Street.
Skyline just happens to be the landlord of his business, Findlay said. But he decided he wasn’t in a position to benefit from his landlord getting a city subsidy, so he joined the rest of council in unanimously backing a staff recommendation to pursue such a deal.
Salisbury, whose wife Ruth Ann Salisbury is a city bus driver, said he realized when he was elected that Guelph Transit issues would be a tricky area for him as a councillor.
However, he decided that with transit, as with water or sewage issues, “it’s really the entire community that benefits” from good policy.
So he decided to be an active voice in transit issues.
He was the councillor who moved during city budget discussions in January that bus fares be frozen in 2007 at 2006 levels. And he has also been highly critical of Guelph Transit’s move this month to 40-minute service during peak travel times, from the previously scheduled bus frequency of 30 minutes.
“It is something I thought I might really have to back off on,” because some might see it as a conflict of interest, he said of transit issues.
However, in the end he decided that “I would really be remiss, I think, not to pursue the best interests of the city,” he said.
“We are at a critical point in the growth of the city,” he said in an interview, and he thinks it’s important for him to pursue transit issues even if some people “get some twisted idea that there is some benefit to me, beyond simply doing the right thing.”
He stressed that when Guelph Transit collective bargaining issues come before council, he will abstain from being part of those discussions.
Salisbury said he’s decided that “when it affects everybody, there is no conflict,” but when a matter at council affects him or his wife “specifically, that’s when there is a conflict.”