LETTER – Waiting for answers on the Saint Patrick’s Day press conference

Dear Armchair Mayor,

Last week I sent an email addressed to all council and Mayor Hamer-Jackson.

Of concern to me has been the “fiasco” on St. Patrick’s Day in 2023.  That members of council who took part in the “press conference” at City Hall were being paid to attend an important meeting at the TNRD is a concern because in what other job can an employee simply skip off duty to attend something else?  Mayor Hamer-Jackson, who has a good work ethic, stayed to attend the TNRD function that day.  A deeper concern is that the same people who skipped out of the TNRD meeting would be the ones who eventually would vote to bar Mayor Hamer-Jackson from attending TNRD meetings.

The anticipation of the councillors the morning of the TNRD meeting must have been beyond measure.  The speaker had her speech prepared and it looked like ample make-up had been put in place to appear before the bright lights of the media.  Yes, having the media there was important.  The press conference at City Hall was something about which the Mayor had not been advised.  Lori, Reid’s wife, was to learn via the media (maybe the local TV station) things about the man she had married.  She never saw it coming.

Thanks to your FOI request for emails leading up to the St. Patrick’s Day “news conference”; I sensed there could have been even the tiniest bit of friction between Councillors Bass and Neustaeter.  Ms. Bass perhaps thought with her experience in journalism, including a stint at The London Free Press, she was more qualified to deliver the message at the conference.  On top of that, she was an incumbent.  Ms. Neustaeter was a first term councillor.  With that in mind, I sent an email to all council and our Mayor to see if I could get clarification on the matter of leadership for the news conference.  As of today’s date and time, no reply has been sent by anyone.

Our family home is in a small farming community near Exeter, Ontario.  One of the staples in just about every home in SW Ontario was The London Free Press.  It was a class newspaper with top notch people on staff.

I still think the March 17, 2023 deal in council chambers was a bad, bad idea. But what made it SO bad was that the wrong person did things.  The “newspaper reporter” who used to work at The London Free Press has way more skill and experience than the one who most people remember seeing on TV seemingly in charge of the poor, classless and tasteless production.  If the former employee of The London Free Press had been in control and calling the shots, who knows where we’d be today?”

Thanks again for your work with the FOI, Armchair Mayor.

JOHN NOAKES,
Citizen of Westmount