Welcome to this week’s installment of “Where’s Cecil?,” my ongoing effort to keep track of Mayor Cecil Clarke’s campaign appearances to judge just how much time he’s taking from his day job to travel the province in pursuit of the leadership of the Progressive Conservative Party of Nova Scotia.
As you will recall, the mayor of the CBRM declared his candidacy for the PC leadership on February 3. Tories will choose their new leader at the very end of October. So Clarke — who is paid $109,754 a year as our municipality’s only “full-time” elected official — intends to spend roughly eight months doing double duty as a mayor/PC leadership candidate.
We know, because CBRM Human Resources told us so, that the department does not track the vacation time of the mayor, whose only constraint is apparently Section 17(4) of the MGA:
A mayor or councillor who, without leave of the council, is absent from three consecutive regular meetings of the council, ceases to be qualified to serve as mayor or as a councillor.
Mayor Clarke, then, is presumably tracking his time off based on his own estimate (shared with CBC radio listeners back in December 2017) that he has over 20 weeks’ vacation stockpiled.
Ballot initiative
I’m not sure how complicated the Tory mail-in leadership ballot is, but if you find it confusing, you can take it (along with a piece of ID) to the Royal Canadian Legion in Port Hawkesbury tonight and Cecil’s volunteers will show you how to fill it out (even if you support another candidate, apparently).
Cecil & Co. will be providing the same helpful service at six other “Rally & Ballot” parties scheduled for Aylesford, Halifax, Yarmouth, Truro, Bridgewater and Stellarton.
On second thought, the voting process does look rather complicated:
Source: Facebook
Calendar
I have added all the Rally & Ballot events. We’re in the home stretch now…
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