An unhinged rant by Sarnia city/county councillor Bill Dennis, that included insults and vulgarity, forced Sarnia council to take a lengthy break about 90 minutes into the virtual budget deliberations Tuesday morning.
Dennis lost his composure after he proposed a motion to reduce consultant fees by 50 per cent in 2025, and CAO Chris Carter was responding to the question.
"The reason why they go to consultants all the time is most of the senior staff isn't from here and most of them don't live here, and they have no idea what people from Sarnia want," said Dennis.
Several councillors made repeated calls for point of order, talking over each other.
"Oh I don't give a, you guys are sellouts, you guys are sellouts, nothing but sellouts, kiss, you're a joke," said Dennis.
The tirade continued with Dennis making personal attacks against councillor Adam Kilner and Mayor Mike Bradley.
"Councillor Dennis, I am just going to say this to you under the rules of order your behaviour is unacceptable," said Bradley.
"You know what, kiss my ass you drunk, you cokehead, f**k off," replied Dennis, before budget talks were paused.
At one point, Councillor Adam Kilner interjected to say that Dennis should not speak to the mayor that way, and then found himself a target of Dennis.
"You know what? Kiss my ass, you fruitcake," Dennis fumed at Kilner in response. It was shortly after that point that Bradley stopped the meeting.
When the meeting resumed, Mayor Bradley announced Dennis would not be joining them.
"This has not happened in all my time as mayor in 36 years, but councillor Dennis is expelled from this meeting," said Bradley. "He knows the way to get back into the meeting and in the future is to apologize to council and to contact the clerk to do so."
As reported by the Sarnia Observer, Dennis has filed a $200,000 lawsuit against Carter claiming he is trying to "render him ineffective."
Prior to the meeting's derailment, council had dealt with the major capital project list and items that had been referred to the budget for consideration.