"Gutowski" Bylaw Making The Rounds

Jeff Green | Apr 11, 2013

At their meeting next week, Frontenac County Council will be considering a bylaw to limit the term of county warden to one year.

If the bylaw is approved - and all indications are that it will be - it will not take effect until after the next municipal election in the fall of 2014.

The current warden, Central Frontenac Mayor Janet Gutowski, is free to remain in the post until that election, unless she chooses to resign.

The request to prepare this bylaw came from North Frontenac Mayor Bud Clayton in December of last year, at the same time that the majority of the membership of the council expressed non-confidence in Warden Gutowski and asked her to resign. Until this year, the accepted practice, for 146 years, had been for the warden to resign after one year, even though the appointment has always officially been for a four-year term. The two adjacent counties, Lanark and Lennox and Addington, change their warden each year,

The preamble to Clayton’s formal request that a bylaw be prepared expresses the frustration felt by members of the council at Gutowski’s decision to stay on as warden after her year was up:

“Mayor Gutowski is not prepared to step down after the first year of her term, even though she has agreed to and honoured this practice in the past. With County Council appointing a warden to a fixed term, County Council does not have leave to revoke that appointment.

“… County Council (with the exception of Warden Gutowski) does not agree with and/or does not support the warden’s decision and requests that this be documented in the minutes … “

Once a public meeting is held at the county office in Glenburnie next Wednesday, April 17, at 1 pm, the bylaw will come forward at a county meeting. Each of the Frontenac townships will also be asked to pass a resolution consenting to the bylaw.

The "Gutowski" bylaw will then be in effect as of December 1, 2014. The bylaw will not prohibit an individual from seeking the warden’s job in consecutive years, but they will have to face an election by council each year.