Essex council appoints mayor from within council

Essex town hall on Feb. 26, 2020. (Rich Garton / CTV Windsor)

Richard Meloche has been appointed mayor in the Town of Essex to replace recently resigned former mayor Larry Snively.

Meloche, who previously served as the town’s deputy mayor, was nominated by Councillor Steve Bjorkman to fill the seat after council voted to fill the vacancy from within.

“I’m excited to have us move forward and eventually have this finished here, so we have a full council again,” said Meloche, shortly after being sworn in and congratulated by council on the appointment.

All but one councillor, Sherry Bondy, supported the motion.

“We need to meet the intent of the municipal act, the shortest straightest line to fill the vacancy, the most cost-effective in terms of council’s time and administration’s time,” said Bondy before the vote, noting she didn’t want a council-member appointed, to avoid an unfair advantage at the next election this fall.

“Going to the runner-up, the person that ran and put their name in, their time in and their money into running for the mayor’s seat is how I think it should go,” she said. “Because I think that we’re going to have this domino effect of other council members then jockeying for the deputy mayor’s seat.”

Coun. Kim Verbeek and the rest of council disagreed with that course of action.

“We do not need to put a newbie in there for them to have to train and work with,” Verbeek said, noting that Meloche was well suited for the role ”because of the role you’ve been playing out, the work you’ve been doing for the past three years, I feel like you would completely alleviate this burden being put on staff if we were to put in someone different.”

The town has been trying to determine how best to fill the vacant mayor’s seat since mid-January, when Larry Snively stepped down as Essex mayor, days after pleading guilty to a single charge of improperly procuring proxy votes during the 2018 Municipal Election Campaign.

He was fined $10,000.

Before Meloche was appointed, Coun. Joe Garon nominated Bondy for the role, but Bondy declined.

“I would like to thank my nominators, but I would graciously decline. Well played political theatre, but I will wait 273 days,” Bondy said.

Council will now have a similar discussion on Jan. 31 to decide how to fill the now-vacant deputy mayor’s seat.