BELLEVILLE – Belleville city council has gone more than $10,000 over its budget for the integrity commissioner to date this year.
City council budgeted $25,000 for the use of the integrity commissioner and has now spent more than $35,000 on the service.
The expenses include investigating a conflict-of-interest complaint, a code-of -onduct review and seven private opinions given to councillors.
At Monday’s meeting, Coun. Pat Culhane raised concern over council members costing the taxpayers by using the commissioner to air out issues they may have with other councillors instead of simply talking with them face to face.
“When I came to this table, I expected a certain degree of maturity in terms of the way adults would interact with other adults,” she said. “It has always been my practice, if I have an issue, to take it directly to the person I have the issue with and attempt to resolve it.”
Mayor Mitch Panciuk said that when he put forward the motion to hire an integrity commissioner during council’s previous term, he did not expect to end up with councillors bringing investigations against each other. He said two of the seven requests for private opinions from the commissioner this year were his, and urged the others who got opinions to be open about those requests as well, so the public knows why the money is being spent.
“Out of those seven opinions, two of them are mine. I tabled them so that the public can actually see what my question was and what the advice of the integrity commissioner was on that,” he said.
Of the seven opinions from the commissioner, Coun. Ryan Williams said three of them were on issues he asked about, and that he is unapologetic because they were related to his personal business ventures and he was seeking advice to avoid any conflict of interest.
Coun. Sean Kelly said overspending on the integrity commissioner needs to stop, and that taxpayers will decide before the next municipal election how they feel about it.
One way to stop the overspending on the integrity commissioner, said Coun. Paul Carr, is to simply follow the rules.
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