By Mark Squibb/October 14, 2021
Witless Bay returning officer Cathy Armstrong was none too impressed with an impromptu swearing-in ceremony that she says should never have taken place.
Armstrong says she was hired by the Town to work the advance polls, election, nomination process and swearing-in ceremony.
Unfortunately for Armstrong, she came aboard in the midst of a flurry of staff resignations that left the Town Hall empty.
“I guess you could say I was the last person working there,” said Armstrong. She added that CAO Kevin Kelly, who she said was a very nice person, was the last employee to resign, leaving the job shortly after the advance poll. So, from September 14 onward, she was the town’s lone employee.
“Even simple things, like how to use the copier, I had to learn on my own,” said Armstrong.
She hired some help to count the ballots and help instruct voters on election day.
“We had an enormous turnout of people, to the point where when we started counting the ballots, it took us right into 2 o’clock in the morning before we got them all done,” said Armstrong. “It was just a steady count.”
She said despite the long hours, election night went well, and that COVID protocols were followed and voters were patient and kind.
Wednesday morning, after not getting to bed until around 3 a.m., Armstrong said she went to the council building, called Municipal Affairs and sent in the appropriate paperwork.
Then came Thursday.
“Thursday was going to be a nice little holiday; I would finally have some time to breath — until all Hell broke lose,” said Armstrong. “On Thursday, I started getting hounded by some of the councillors, four of them, that wanted to be sworn in right away. But I was trying to explain to them that there was a window of three days that the other candidates have to decide if they want a recount. Even though there were no big margins, I still felt they had the right to have that three day (period) that was in the ruling.”
One candidate, Jacob Hayden, was out of the province, and Armstrong said she was being pressured by other members of council to swear him in through a virtual ceremony.
“They were telling me that I had to swear him in virtually,” said Armstrong. “You can’t swear someone in virtually, they have to sign that Oath of Office in front of me.”
She touched base with Municipal Affairs, which confirmed that a candidate cannot be sworn-in virtually.
Eventually, Armstrong decided to host the ceremony on Sunday, October 3, at 4 in the evening.
That was not soon enough however, for some councillors who wanted to be sworn in immediately.
She said one of them even came to her house.
“He came in very nasty, and in a shouting kind of way wanted to know where I was at,” said Armstrong. “He told me that, no way no how, that I had to swear him in right there and then.”
She said the councillor demanded to be sworn in right away because he was afraid the former council would spend all the town’s money before Sunday’s swearing in ceremony.
“He got very nasty about it, and very upset by it,” said Armstrong. “I couldn’t listen to him any more. So, I told him, ‘I am doing your swearing-in on Sunday at 4 o’ clock, and that’s it. I’m going to call all the rest of them and let them now the same thing.”
Armstrong said that the man told her he wouldn’t be home on Sunday, and insisted she do it before then.
“That night I got a message from someone, asking, “Did you know that Lorna Yard is planning a swearing-in ceremony in her living room at 1 o’clock?’” said Armstrong. “She can’t do that. She’s an elected councillor, she can’t override what I was put here to do. Who does that? I couldn’t believe it. So, then I called one of the council members, and apparently, they had been called and asked to be (there), because they were going to be swore in at Lorna Yard’s. And I said, ‘There’s something not right with this picture.’”
Armstrong said she then went to newly elected councillor Nancy Burke, and that Burke had heard of it, but wasn’t planning on attending.”
“Around 1:30 or 2 o’clock on Saturday afternoon, I got a call from a friend of mine saying that there were people entering the council building,” said Armstrong.
She said she was so disturbed, as she thought she was the only one who had a key to the building, that she phoned the RCMP.
“If anything was stolen or broken, because you know yourself that the council building is a very sacred place, there’s so much personal information held there, and no one has any business in that building unless they have authority to be there, and there’s management (present),” said Armstrong. “But there wasn’t, they just walked in, apparently got sworn-in, and did whatever they liked. So, I called the RCMP and told them the story, and told them that I just wanted it on file that I was not near that building on Saturday.”
Four members of council were indeed sworn-in that Sunday — new Mayor Trevor Croft, new Deputy Mayor Lorna Yard, and councillors Gerard Dunne and Ralph Carey, who had served on the 2013 – 2017 council.
Armstrong immediately cancelled plans to hold the ceremony on Sunday.
“I could not do a swearing-in ceremony on Sunday for the simple fact that Lorna Yard and the other three council members were after going over my head and doing something that wasn’t ethical,” she said. “I can’t understand why they did what they did… They did it for power, not to help the people they said they were going to be council members for.”
Come Monday, she phoned Municipal Affairs and was told the ceremony was perfectly within the right of the councillors who had wished to be sworn-in. She said they then asked her to simply swear in the other three at a later date.
Come Tuesday evening, Armstrong did swear-in the remaining three members of council – Alex Troake, Jacob Hayden, and Nancy Bruke.
Croft came out on top of the municipal election, earning 520 votes. At council’s first public meeting, held at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, October 8, he introduced himself as the new mayor of Witless Bay.
“It’s a bit daunting at first,” said Croft. “But you get into the swing of things. We’re after having one meeting already, and it went fairly smoothly. We’ll have another meeting on the nineteenth. So, the more I get involved with it the more comfortable I feel.”
Croft was declared mayor, while Yard, who finished sixth in the vote count, was declared deputy mayor.
The actual election of those positions, however, happened in a private meeting before the public meeting via a secret ballot, according to Croft.
He admits several members of council, himself included, wanted to be sworn-in immediately.
“I respect Cathy, and she’s done an absolutely fantastic job this entire election, but there were some issues that arose,” said Croft. “She didn’t want to swear us in when we wanted to, so we decided, in order to get things done and get things moving as quick as possible, we went a different route… There were some issues on council, and we needed to get in as quick as we can to make sure that we didn’t fall behind. And we learned there was a lot more fallen behind than we actually thought there was. But we had to get in as quick as possible to make sure that everything was going to be worked out as quickly as possible. So, the majority of us got sworn in as early as possible, and the others that didn’t get sworn in right away got sworn in at a later day.”
He said the swearing in ceremony held on Saturday was completely above board.
“Everything was done completely legally,” said Croft. “We went to Municipal Affairs to find out the proper way to do it. They knew the situation in Witless Bay has never been easy.”
He said a commissioner of oaths came by to swear-in the councillors. As to how they got inside the building, Croft said Armstrong was wrong in asserting she was the only one with a key.
“There’s five or six keys to that building, so I think she was a bit mistaken,” said Croft. “I got my key off a past councillor. Once we were sworn in, that’s when I got the key.”
He did not provide the name of that councillor, as he said they had asked not to be named.
“Once Cathy realized the rules and regulations weren’t what she thought the rules and regulations were, that’s when everything started to move smoothly again,” said Croft. “It went a little hairy there for a little while, but it was nothing we couldn’t handle for sure.”
As for the supposed idea of a swearing-in ceremony in Yard’s living room, Croft said he had never heard of it. Yard herself was unavailable for comment, Tuesday, citing a personal matter.
Croft said one of the major issues that needs to be addressed is staffing.
As Armstrong alluded to, the town hall was unstaffed for a period of at least aa couple of weeks. Council voted during its Friday night meeting to appoint former assistant town clerk Barbara Harrigan, who resigned a few months back, to a temporary clerk’s position.
“She came out of retirement to help us out for a couple of months,” said Croft. “We’re going to be hiring somebody here soon I assume to be her assistant and get trained in. So, we’re very thankful that Barb is back, she’s going to help us out a lot.”
Croft said getting the positions of CAO and Town Clerk filled are among the highest priorities of council.
“The most important thing is to get the town hall opened up so that people can get their taxes paid and get their permits and stuff like that,” said Croft. “If we don’t have anybody in the office, we can’t get anything done, and it’s been backing up for a while, so Barb has her work cut out for her over the next couple of weeks.”
Croft said he didn’t know whether folks on the payroll, such as maintenance workers or the fire chief, had gone without pay due to the lack of staff.
“We’re on damage control right now, which we really shouldn’t be, we should be concentrating on other issues, but we have to fix all these problems before we can start making things better,” Croft said.
The first public meeting of council was short, lasting 15 minutes, with more of a focus on hitting the brakes than the gas pedal. One of the first items of business was to rescind the motion of the previous council which had issued a contract for an extension to Mullowney’s Lane. That was followed by a motion to order law firm Stewart McKelvey, which represented the Town against groups such as Yard’s that opposed that work off, to cease all activities on behalf of the town. The new council also ordered O’Brien’s Contracting, which was constructing the extension, to cease all activities on behalf of the town pending a review.
All three motions passed unanimously with no debate.
Another motion that passed unanimously was that the locks on the town hall and Puffin Centre be changed, which effectively locks out community groups that use the Puffin Centre, at least for the time being.
Councillor Jacob Hayden said it was simply a matter of council wanting to get a grasp on how many keys have been distributed to community groups, and that those who should have keys will get new ones.
The next public meeting will take place October 19.
