Saint John council members have elected the city’s next deputy mayor, but not everyone is happy with the new process.
Coun. John MacKenzie was officially elected to the role during a special Common Council meeting Monday evening.
“I’m humbled. I appreciate the support council has shown in me and I’ll do the best job I possibly can to represent them,” MacKenzie, a three-term councillor, said in a phone interview after the meeting.
But the process to determine the next deputy mayor took place before the meeting in Committee of the Whole, which was streamed live on the city’s YouTube channel.
MacKenzie and two other councillors — David Hickey and Greg Norton — put their names forward for the role, and council voted on their top choice.
Because the process was done by secret ballot, it is unknown how many votes each councillor received, only that MacKenzie had the majority vote.
“I thought that I had enough experience with being chairman of the District Education Council for a couple of years, my work history and the experience I had there, and nine years on council that I would be well suited for the job, so I thought it only fair to put my name forward,” said MacKenzie.
It was the first time that all elected councillors had the chance to be deputy mayor after changes made to the selection process earlier this year.
A longstanding tradition saw council elect the councillor who received the most votes in the municipal election as deputy mayor.
But the previous council voted in March to change the process. The old method tended to favour councillors-at-large, who receive votes from all four wards, as opposed to the other eight councillors who were only on the ballots in one ward each.
New Councillor Speaks Out About Changes
“It’s a massive democratic deficit,” councillor-at-large Brent Harris said about the change during Committee of the Whole.
After receiving 8,487 votes during the municipal election, Harris would have been elected deputy mayor under the old system.
Harris said while he intended to put his name forward for deputy mayor, he did not feel the conversation was in a place where it was giving a proper weighting of a public mandate.
“Whoever we vote for tonight may not have even close to a majority of a mandate to replace Your Worhsip’s seat should something happen to her, and that is not a great place to be in for a democracy,” he said.
Harris said he understands that the old system put ward councillors at a disadvantage, but he thinks the new model needs to be revisited, noting that it has caused “some amount of distraction” among the new council.
“I think with this new system, we have a democratic deficit that may exacerbate the vote in the future that we get for voter turnout, which is something this council needs to work on. It’s important
“I think it’s caused some amount of distraction. I won’t say division because I do sense there’s a lot of unity in this council already and I’m excited about that, but I do feel like there’s been a distraction right out of the gate,” he said.
The new councillor said he also fears the new system may exacerbate already-low voter turnout in the future.
Before calling for the vote, Mayor Donna Reardon said she feels as though the voting process is “the most democratic,” adding that it is a discussion for another day.