Bad Behaviour, Disrespect in Council Meetings

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There’s a video clip being shared on social media from the “special” meeting of the Strategic Initiatives Standing Committee Agenda, on Thursday, October 14, 2021 (full video here). It shows a dishevelled Councillor Bob “Lapdog” Madigan in the upper right corner of the screen. It’s worth watching to see how poorly some of our councillors treat their role and their office. The meeting was held to continue the discussions on the judicial report’s recommendations that councillors should disclose their personal financial relations and holdings when … click below for more ↓

What is Council Trying to Hide?

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In an article in CollingwoodToday titled 18 simple rules? Council receives draft of new Code of Conduct, we learn that council is looking to update and revise its current Code of Conduct. Again. The article says, A new set of 18 rules aims to help town councillors navigate the sometimes-complicated situations they may find themselves in through their public service roles. You’d almost think it was a good thing when the article adds that the proposed code “seeks to incorporate recommendations to tighten up and … click below for more ↓

Meng and the SVJI: Parallel Cases?

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The ongoing case against Huawei’s Meng Wanzhou has an odd parallel in Collingwood. Our own petty, revenge-obsessed council’s threats to sue people who caused no harm nor have ever been charged with a crime has an echo in a comment made during Meng’s recent extradition hearings.  Associate Chief Justice Heather Holmes said she was “skeptical of the validity of the United States’ claim,” according to the report, and commented something worth quoting. Of course, many local people are also skeptical of Mayor Saunderson’s claims about … click below for more ↓

Why Are Council’s Conflicts of Interest Being Ignored?

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While local media focuses on our revenge-obsessed council’s myopic intent to punish people who committed no crimes, merely thwarted their Great Leader’s personal ambitions in 2012, they blithely overlook the bigger issue at the council table: conflicts of interest. Avoiding even the appearance of conflict is at the core of the recommendations in the Saunderson Vindictive Judicial Inquiry (aka the SVJI), yet these recommendations are routinely ignored at the council table. I have written about and documented them here in detail, but local media also … click below for more ↓

More Secrecy, More Deception, More Conflicts

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Once again our council scurried behind closed doors to discuss town business that should have been discussed in the open. But openness was never a watchword for this council. However, secretive and deceptive seem appropriate adjectives. Two of the three items on Friday’s (June 11) “special” council meeting were about or related to the job-and-revenue-killing interim control bylaw (ICBL) that was passed in late April without even the pretense of consultation with the public, with water companies, with developers, or with the municipalities affected by … click below for more ↓

The irony, the hypocrisy

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There’s a letter on the council consent agenda that will either make you shake your head in wonder at the brash irony of it, or laughing at a writer who plays a fawning Rudy Giuliani to Saunderson’s Trump. It’s from Claire Tucker-Reid, the co-chair of the former Central Park Steering Committee (SPSC; our current mayor was the other), the committee that can be argued to be the cause of this recent and expensive turmoil that led to the town wasting more than $8 million of … click below for more ↓

The Judicial Inquiry and $7+ Million

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Was it worth more than $7.7 million of your tax dollars? That’s roughly $8,400 a page (including, yes, the blank pages). That includes $232,866 in town staff salaries and $48,008 in staff travel expenses. Fifty-seven percent of that total went to legal costs, including $1.58 million on the town’s own legal costs. I can’t tell from the article linked above if the total includes the cost of having to rent commercial space downtown for the treasury department during the inquiry. I’m not a lawyer, so … click below for more ↓

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