Editor: Your March 23 column, “Controversial mayors are nothing new,” does a fine job of capturing the essence of the current dilemma facing the Township of Langley. It is most clear in your statement that “[Rick] Green has adopted some of the tactics of [Joe] Lopushinsky, appearing to have no interest in what other members of council think.”
Three years ago, Township residents bought in to candidate Green’s message, “Time for a Change.” Many of the promises made in 2008 have not materialized. We find today that those numerous promises were not well-researched, and could not be implemented due to inaccuracy, statutory, or legal prohibitions.
Some, like jacking up airport lease rates to industrial levels, he has outright broken. Yet the mayor and some of his followers strongly maintain that it is council that cannot work with the mayor to enact these promises.
Experts in organizational behaviour have concluded that “toxic leaders” sometimes rise to power. A toxic leader is someone who abuses the leader-follower relationship by leaving the group or organization in a worse-off condition than what he first found them in.
Toxic leaders engage in destructive behaviours that cause serious and long lasting harm to their organizations. Toxic leaders play to their followers’ base fears and stifle constructive criticism. Toxic leaders feed their followers illusions that enhance the leader’s power by convincing followers that the leader is the only one who can save the organization while impairing the followers’ capacity to act.
This phenomenon is studied in the work of Professor Jean Lipman-Blumen, whose book “The Allure of Toxic Leaders: Why We Follow Destructive Bosses and Corrupt Politicians — And How We Can Survive Them,” was published by the Oxford University Press in 2005.
Many residents in the Township now realize we have a problem, despite the efforts of a handful of dedicated letter writers who have been fed “illusions that enhance the leader’s power.”
I have carefully reviewed the mayor’s campaign website (that was removed the day after the last election, but I archived), attended council meetings and read the majority of reports to mayor and council, and I can clearly see evidence of toxic leadership in the office of the mayor. I urge Township residents to keep an open mind and watch closely the budget process, and then campaign statements of this mayor, leading up to our municipal election in November of this year.
Toxic leaders like Mayor Green do not change their spots. It’s up to the voters to change them by defeating them, as I suspect will happen this November.
Joe Zaccaria,
Walnut Grove
