Borough's Citoyen newsletter 'disgraceful,' says former councillor Jeremy Searle

Former Côte des Neiges-NDG councillor Jeremy Searle says the borough's new public relations publication, Le Citoyen, is "nothing more than a means of subverting public money into advertising for the Union party's political advertising purposes."

Searle, who lost a major bid he had made in the last borough election to become CDN-NDG's mayor by unseating Michael Applebaum, is currently running an English-style coffee and confectionery shop in Westmount, while anticipating the next election, which takes place in November. "It's disgraceful when elected people use information, documents of this sort to promote themselves," Searle says, "in the same way as I disapprove of using public budgets for Happy Christmas, Happy Chanukah messages and so forth."

Searle claims that during his years in office as city councillor for NDG's Loyola district, he used to turn over his promotional budget to local charity groups like Head & Hands, "to let them make their pitch, instead of using it for myself."

Loyola constituents may recall how Searle used to publish and distribute a circular of his own, called very aptly, Some Useful Information, which was a comprehensive list of phone numbers and addresses for virtually every public service group and organization in the area. "There was never anything about me in it," he maintains, even though a headshot photo of Searle was featured prominently on the front cover. "Of course it had my picture on it," he says, noting that it took about up a relatively small area of the page, compared to the latest issue of Le Citoyen, in which Applebaum's image takes up more than half the front page.

Searle says he and the party he created for the last election, Équipe Jeremy Searle, will be running in November. While he'll be seeking his old city council seat in Loyola, the party will be running a candidate for the mayoralty of CDN-NDG, as well as for Centre City mayor. "For mayor of Montreal, it's symbolic to give people an option," he says, adding that he already has a "good candidate lined up" for borough mayor.