BARRIE - Now that Barrie Mayor Dave Aspden has confirmed his involvement in the publication of an unauthorized ad for a police chief, councillors and police board members have even more questions.

An ad, full of grammatical and typographical errors, ran in the Feb. 6 Globe and Mail. It directed resumes to City Hall, rather than the customary police board secretary.

“I think it’s the mayor’s attempt to highjack the board,” said police board member Doug Jure. “Is it perhaps he already has a candidate for the chief’s job? (Placing the ad) without half the board knowing and then having resumes directed to City Hall raises questions.”

When asked by The Advance if he has a candidate in mind for police chief’s job, the mayor replied by e-mail that he did not.

“The mayor has no one in mind,” the e-mail from Aspden’s office said.

At its Jan. 26 meeting, the Barrie Police Services Board didn’t vet the police chief ad, nor did it discuss the process for hiring a chief to succeed Wayne Frechette, who retires Sept. 1.

Instead, in private, the board became deadlocked on a personnel issue, and the chief threatened to resign.

Aspden did not tell police board about the ad for the chief’s job but he did call Frechette on Feb. 4.

“The mayor phoned me on Thursday to tell me, to give me a heads-up, it would be in the paper on the weekend,” said Frechette. “It’s kind of odd. Typically, when boards advertise for a chief, it’s signed and put in by the board chair and the resumes go to the board secretary. Typically, boards go the Ontario Association of Chiefs of Police and they put it out across the province for free. I see ads all the time.”

Jure, a member of the police board’s chief-search subcommittee, said the board hadn’t decided whether to restrict its search to Ontario or go nationwide.

Aspden admitted to using a template from another police board when he wrote the ad. He would not say anything more, directing further questions to the police board.

Councillors say they have more questions now that the mayor has given somewhat of an answer.

“I would like to see the mayor come clean and explain what transpired to lead to that ad … and who paid for it,” said Ward 3 Coun. Rod Jackson. “It looks like there was a rogue element that went ahead and did it without direction from the police board or without consultation of the recruitment committee.

“The fact that city resources are being used to collect the resumes and applications is also a cause for concern especially considering nobody on senior staff had any idea who put the ad in or who paid for it. There is supposed to be a clear delineation between City Hall and the Police Services Board as a basic matter of democracy.”

Ward 7 Coun. John Brassard went further and asked the question he says others are asking: is the mayor working behind the scenes to influence the choice?

“Why was it done this way?” Brassard asked. “It could lead one to the conclusion that it was an attempt to unduly shape the process and hire a preferred candidate. The public has a right to know why this went on.”