Quality leaders remain the key
Editorial London Free Press March 1 2006

Unless London city council manages to contort itself into yet another legal pretzel, yesterday’s ruling by Superior Court Justice Dougald McDermid, denying the city leave to appeal an Ontario Municipal Board decision, will be the final word on the question of city wards and their boundaries — at least for now.

This November, Londoners will likely elect a single councillor from each of 14 wards, rather than two councillors from each of seven. A mayor and four controllers would keep the total number of politicians around the council horseshoe at 19.

McDermid’s decision cleanly swept aside every one of the city’s arguments for appealing an OMB ruling of late last year that handed a stunning political victory to Imagine London, a citizens’ group that had petitioned the OMB after council gave it short shrift over the issue of redrawing ward boundaries and reshaping council.

In fact, to the city’s assertion that Imagine London’s petition represented the views of only a tiny minority of London voters, the judge countered that the laws permitting the OMB to hear from small groups existed precisely for that reason — to give voice to the marginalized.

This newspaper was among those community voices favouring retention of the seven-ward, 14-councillor system, along with a four-member board of control and a mayor. While quality leadership at city hall had occasionally been lacking over the years, this was not, we argued, a structural problem.

Then last fall, in the wake of Imagine London’s OMB victory, we expressed the view that some mutually acceptable solution should be negotiated by the two sides.

Justice McDermid’s decision should end the discussion and, rather mercifully, lay to rest the bizarre spectacle of a municipality spending thousands of dollars on legal wrangling with well-intentioned citizens whose only real concern is to improve the quality of municipal governance.

Londoners will need the benefit of some experience to see whether a new ward structure, based on community identity, makes a difference.

In the end, the kind of municipal government we get will be determined not as much by council seats, numbers and dotted lines on maps, as by the quality of those who seek and attain public office.