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County Council takes step toward reducing number of councillors

May 1, 2025   ·   0 Comments

By Brian Lockhart

County of Simcoe councillors have moved closer to reducing the size of County Council from 32 to 17 members.

Following extensive discussion throughout 2025, councillors enacted a by-law on April 22 to initiate changes to the size and composition of County Council. A new Council would include the mayors from each member municipality and an appointment of a full-time Warden.

The move is one more step in a comprehensive process which included a public meeting on March 11, 2025, where feedback from the public was received.

The matter will now be considered by the member municipalities as part of a triple majority approval process.

A focus of the discussion was the weighted vote component which allocates a total number of votes to each municipality based on the number of electorates in that municipality. This essentially means that larger municipalities have more votes.

Currently, this is apportioned between two municipal representatives – the Mayor and Deputy Mayor – who both sit as County Councillors. The proposal to reduce Council would reallocate the same weight to one municipal representative.

Councillors requested that the Governance Committee make recommendations about the circumstances in which a weighted vote could be used going forward. Once the Governance Committee has had the opportunity to consider these circumstances, recommendations will be brought back to County Council for consideration.

Changes to the composition of Council are not yet finalized.

The enactment of this by-law is the first step in the ‘triple majority’ process. This process requires a majority of votes on County Council – which has now been achieved – a majority of lower-tier councils passing resolutions consenting to the by-law, and the consenting lower-tier councils representing a majority of all electors in the upper-tier municipality.

The by-law will be circulated to the 16 lower-tier councils for further consideration with responses requested by June 30, 2025.

If approved, these decisions would take effect for the 2026-2030 term.

The current structure will continue for the remainder of the current term of County Council.

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