On July 13, 2020 ago I made a motion to ask questions of the board of Bluewater Power which failed. Before failing, the mayor lectured me about how I had the audacity to question the mayor’s integrity because a $10,000 expense showed up in his expense report from a donation from Bluewater Power. As you can see from the document below though, the question made perfect sense.
This meeting was soon followed up by an Integrity Commissioner complaint about me for questioning his integrity (I wonder who filed that complaint) and was dismissed soon after.
Councillor Stark and I attended the Bluewater Power AGM on Sept 29, 2020 and asked a few questions. I asked the CEO, Janice McMichael-Dennis, who approves donations such as this, and she said that she had final say. She refused to answer my question about what assurances there are in place to ensure that Bluewater Power donations are apolitical and just reassured me that this never happened. Some questions were asked of staff to explain what was going on here, and the questions were answered here.
If you watch this meeting, Mayor Mike Bradley tells us that he requested the donation be made. (That answers the question as to why it was under his name, not sure why he couldn’t tell us that the first time). Oh and he also told us that they had a few months to organize and plan, which means they had lots of time to communicate to council to look for their approval.
So now we have our mayor, knocking on the door of another councillor’s spouse (the CEO of Bluewater Power is Councillor Bill Dennis’ wife) who happens to be the CEO and directly, without accountability, in control of thousands of dollars of “donations” of tax payer’s money all circumventing council’s oversight and approval, to fund an event that was being organized without council’s knowledge. Let’s not forget that $5000 more was directly from the city’s budget for bands and a stage rental to be setup right next to an already existing stage cause the sun would get into the performer’s eyes.But don’t worry, the mayor and Bluewater Power CEO all assure us that the event was really great and they had a wonderful time. Looks like Bradley is having a great time in that photo on stage.