Meaford councillors combined to defeat their own self-declared number one priority for the second straight week.

Meaford council at a special meeting held on June 29 defeated a revised Operational Review proposal brought forward by CAO Frank Miele. The Operational Review - demanded by members of council just a few months ago during the budget process - is now in complete limbo with Miele telling reporters after the meeting he doesn't know how to proceed.

"I don't know what to do to be honest with you. I'm at a loss for words," said Miele, after his proposal was defeated by council in a 3-3 tie vote. "Right now I won't be doing anything. (The Operational Review) is on hold. I guess I need to sit down with all of council to find out what they want and obviously the Deputy Mayor needs to be here," said the CAO.

Deputy Mayor Traynor was absent from the short meeting held on June 29 to consider the budgets for the water and sewage departments. Other than those budgets - the only other item on the agenda was a written report from Miele about the Operational Review.

Miele's first proposal to hire the KPMG consulting firm to assist with the Review at a cost of $20,000 was defeated by council because it was $5,000 over budget.

A week later Miele proposed in a written report that he "re-scope" the requirements of the consulting firm in an effort to reduce the cost to the $15,000 allocated by council in the 2009 budget. Miele proposed taking the "re-scoped" parameters of the study back to the bidding firms in an effort to get the costs down.

Incredibly, when it came time to vote on the matter the item was defeated in a 3-3 tie vote. Councillor Cynthia Lemon - who just a week earlier supported spending the full $20,000 on the Review - reversed her vote and didn't  support the lower cost option presented by Miele. With Deputy Mayor Mike Traynor absent Lemon's vote caused Miele's recommendation to be defeated when councillors Gerald Shortt and Jim McPherson refused to support the lower cost option.

Lemon told The Express after the meeting she didn't support watering down the Operational Review.

"I have a real concern we're compromising the whole Operational Review by nickel and diming our CAO in the tender process," said Lemon. "It concerns me that council would micromanage something to a point that we'd put a stranglehold on something this important," she said.

Lemon's vote shocked everybody at the meeting. Just minutes before the vote she called the Operational Review a "pivotal priority." Even councillor Harley Greenfield - who had not supported the $20,000 option - supported Miele's proposal saying he was confident that the CAO could reduce the costs.

"I thought this was a pretty good alternative to move forward," Miele said after the meeting. "I guess I will quietly and softly move forward. Most of the work will be done by us, but we need that external resource giving us an unbiased opinion on our employees and structure. It's only logical in an Operational Review to have those external resources as support," said the CAO.

Miele stressed that the consultants would be used as support resources. He said he has set up a three-pronged approach involving the CAO's office, a Citizen's Review Committee and the consultants, to handle the Operational Review.