Simcoe County bylaw to chop council size caps first leg of triple majority, weighted vote under review
Posted April 22, 2025
The bylaw to reduce the composition of Simcoe County council by half starting next term was officially confirmed this morning completing the first of three steps in the approvals process.
It'll now be circulated to the lower tier municipalities, where a majority - 9 out of 16 - must approve lowering council size to 16 from 32, and appointing a full-time Warden as the 17th member.
The final piece of the triple majority is consenting lower-tier councils representing a majority of all electors in Simcoe County. Responses are expected by June 30,and would take effect for the 2026-2030 term.
However, last month, 17 members of County council did not return from a break in the meeting following the vote on reducing composition, meaning a quorum was absent for at least 15 minutes and all matters suspended until today. The protest was over the issue of weighted votes under the new regime. Councillors from the lesser populated municipalities including Adjala-Tosorontio and Essa, and Clearview, would rather one vote one member. Their concern is the larger municipalities would dominate the upper tier. Weighted votes only factor when a member calls for a Recorded Vote.
Midland Mayor Bill Gordon told council this morning weighted votes was "equality" and the more effective way to provide representation by population or there would be at least 60 councillors without it.
The current weighted vote formula gives each municipality a minimum of three votes and that each member municipality having more than 5,000 municipal electors, be entitled to one additional vote for every 2,000 municipal electors over 5,000. The votes are then split between the Mayor and Deputy Mayor. The numbers are updated at every regular election by the Clerk of each municipality. Therefore, the number of weighted votes at County Council is adjusted each term of Council.
Under a restructured system, weighted votes would be assigned to the one representative. The dedicated Warden would be granted a weighted vote equal to the member with the lowest number of weighted votes.
A final effort to affect weighted votes was approved this morning when a majority of council approved sending the issue to the governance committee to come up with recommendations as part of an overall review of the County's procedural bylaw.
