Category: Ineptitude and bungling

More Lawyers, More Costs, More Secrecy

Collingwood / Council / deception & secrecy / Ineptitude and bungling / Saunderson's Vindictive Judicial Inquiry3 Comments

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Monday night, council will once again scurry behind closed doors like cockroaches to avoid the light of public scrutiny to hear yet another virtual presentation from lawyers about the Saunderson Vindictive Judicial Inquiry (aka the SVJI). And, of course, it will cost the taxpayers again to help The Great Leader pursue his personal vendetta against councillors and staff who countered his ambition, nearly a decade ago. The final report for the SVJI was released in early November, 2019, 20 months ago. The events it examined are nine and ten years old. A police investigation opened in 2013 never found any … click below for more ↓

Council Wants to Give Away Our Parkland to Strangers

Collingwood / Council / deception & secrecy / Ineptitude and bungling / Planning & Policies / Publicity & Communications4 Comments

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On July 29, 2020, Councillor Jeffrey (the Queen of the Unlimited Expense Account), seconded by Councillor Hamelin made a motion to give away a very large piece of Harbourview Park to a group that few if any had heard of before that date. GIVE AWAY OUR PUBLIC WATERFRONT PROPERTY! There was no public consultation, residents were not asked whether we felt handing our parkland to an out-of-town organization was a good idea, but council approved the motion unanimously.* Council agreed to turn over a vast area of public green space to an outside organization so they could build a two-storey, … click below for more ↓

Engineers Disagree With Water “Crisis” Report

Collingwood / Conflicts of Interest / Council / deception & secrecy / Ineptitude and bungling / Saunderson's Vindictive Judicial Inquiry / Utilities: electricity and water2 Comments

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In a letter dated July 2, 2021 to the CAO and the mayor, in response to staff report CAO 2021-10, two of Collingwood’s most respected engineering firms took exception to the town’s claim there was a “water crisis” and offered solutions to the alleged problems. In responding to the report’s recommendations about releasing some capacity for development, the engineers said the recommendations fell “considerably short of what is appropriate.” It adds, Further the report makes little mention to the dialogue and solutions discussed with the industry that have occurred since the ICBL was abruptly put in place on April 26, … click below for more ↓

More on the Harbourview Park Dump

Collingwood / Council / Development & Growth / Financial follies / Ineptitude and bungling / Planning & Policies / Utilities: electricity and water2 Comments

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Speaking to some long-time Collingwood residents, I’ve learned a bit more about the dump that lies under the soil at Harbourview Park and is now proposed as the site of a children’s splash pad. As far as I have been able to determine, this is being done without a proper environmental assessment having been done to ensure its safety. An EA is required by the Ministry of the Environment, Conservation, and Parks for former dump sites. The dump was meant for industrial waste but was quickly used for all sorts of garbage, including household and restaurant waste. As one resident told … click below for more ↓

Cwood’s Corroding Lampposts

Collingwood / Council / Development & Growth / Disrespect and bad behaviour / Ineptitude and bungling6 Comments

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First Street was so attractive when it was first rebuilt, about 15 years ago: all new and shiny infrastructure. But since then, it has been basically neglected and the inevitable effects of snow, moisture, salt, sand, and pollution have played their role in corroding the once-proud, beautiful lampposts that line our highway through town. Walk along First Street between Hurontario and High Streets. Look at the bases of lampposts on both sides of the street. They are rotting away and will likely collapse unless restored or replaced. And it needs to be done immediately. many of the collars at their … click below for more ↓

They’re Paving Paradise to Put Up a Parking Lot

Collingwood / Council / Development & Growth / Disrespect and bad behaviour / Financial follies / Ineptitude and bungling / Utilities: electricity and water11 Comments

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By now you’re aware that our council has approved a plan to destroy a large open, public space in Harbourview Park, and replace healthy grass and trees with an asphalt parking lot so that people will drive instead of bicycling or walking to use the $1.55 million splash pad that will also be built there.  This is the same council that is hiring a “climate change specialist” for $80,000 a year. You think that this “climate change specialist” would advise them to take a pedestrian-and-family friendly, environmentally-positive greenspace covered with renewable carbon-eating plant life and turn it into a vehicle-intensive … click below for more ↓

More Council Secrecy, More Lawyers Paid

Collingwood / Council / deception & secrecy / Ineptitude and bungling / Saunderson's Vindictive Judicial InquiryOne Comment

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On Thursday, June 24, our council again scurried behind closed doors to do town business out of the light of public scrutiny. Oh, how they love doing their machinations in the dark! The items on the agenda included: Items for discussion: a) Collingwood Judicial Inquiry Legal Advice; and b) Collingwood Airport Why would the airport be a topic for secrecy? After all, we don’t own it. It was privatized by Saunderson and his cabal last term without any public input (and sold for considerably less than the appraised value). It’s in Clearview, so we have nothing to say about planning, services, … click below for more ↓

Chris Potts Nails It

Collingwood / Council / Financial follies / Ineptitude and bungling / Planning & Policies / Publicity & Communications / Staff and administration3 Comments

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Nailed it! In his latest blog post, former Town of Collingwood employee, Chris Potts writes about our council’s ill-conceived plan to hire a “climate change specialist” to add to the already egregiously expensive and bloated town payroll that taxpayers are burdened with: The Town of Collingwood seems to just hire and hire and hire, the next time we see this the position will be a coordinator, or director and listed on the sunshine list. Lets get to the real point here, Collingwood is in a water crisis, a building crisis, a park crisis, a leader ship crisis, did you know … click below for more ↓

Ignoring the Potential Conflicts of Interest

Collingwood / Conflicts of Interest / Council / Ineptitude and bungling / Saunderson's MPP campaign / Saunderson's Vindictive Judicial Inquiry / Utilities: electricity and water3 Comments

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A story in CollingwoodToday notes that council will hold a meeting on May 31 to consider exceptions to their job-and-revenue-killing interim control bylaw (ICBL). That bylaw abruptly ended all growth, building, and development because our inept council had failed to pay attention ever since they were elected to the water issue and the pipeline contract, despite staff reports about both. I wrote about this last month, pointing out how in 2015 the previous council killed the negotiations that began in 2014 under an earlier council. Had the negotiations been allowed to continue, we would have had a new contract PLUS … click below for more ↓

Council Fails Our Affordable Housing Residents

Collingwood / Council / Ineptitude and bungling / Planning & PoliciesOne Comment

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It’s ironic how Mayor Saunderson so loudly acclaimed the “Community-based strategic plan” last term (a document that was neither community-based nor a strategic plan) yet when a major issue arises around something important that was raised in that very “plan” he seems to be awfully silent. I’m talking about the disaster that is the low-rent/affordable housing apartments at the corner of Second and High Streets. According to a recent story in CollingwoodToday, with the understated title: “Residents irate about conditions of affordable housing building”* Tenants of Collingwood affordable housing hub, say they feel like ‘hostages’ in their apartments and are … click below for more ↓

As Important as Clean Drinking Water? Part 2

Collingwood / Council / Disrespect and bad behaviour / Ineptitude and bungling / Saunderson's Vindictive Judicial Inquiry / Utilities: electricity and waterOne Comment

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Remember last December, when the town’s CAO announced that the Saunderson Vindictive Judicial Inquiry (aka the SVJI) was “equivalent with the top priorities we have, like providing clean drinking water”? Today, that statement would seem to be egg on her face, given more recent events (and the public’s utter lack of interest in the SVJI). Priorities like “clean drinking water” certainly take on a new light, when you consider how long council ignored our drinking water until it suddenly became a “crisis” that required a knee-jerk reaction. Council quickly passed a job-killing, revenue-killing, growth-killing bylaw to deal with it. And … click below for more ↓

Developers Bite Back at ICBL

Collingwood / Disrespect and bad behaviour / Ineptitude and bungling / Planning & Policies / Saunderson's MPP campaign / Saunderson's Vindictive Judicial InquiryOne Comment

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‘The town created its own emergency’: Collingwood developer says project on hold due to water capacity issues. So reads the headline on a story on Simcoe.com. I laughed and laughed at the risible hypocrisy when I read this line in it: “Addressing the water treatment plant expansion and the water capacity issue is one of the town’s highest priorities,” said Mayor Brian Saunderson. “The town is aggressively pursuing remedies to address the water capacity issue.” The water capacity “crisis” is a self-made debacle created and maintained by the current council. The majority of them knew it was coming back in 2015! … click below for more ↓

The Irony of Council’s Obsession

Collingwood / Council / Ineptitude and bungling / Planning & Policies / Saunderson's Vindictive Judicial InquiryLeave a comment

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Oh, the delicious irony. A council that has been so obsessed with the Saunderson Vindictive Judicial Inquiry (aka the SVJI) at the expense of everything important in this town is suddenly now all aflutter over traffic calming and street safety. Yeah, right… Since they were first elected, our myopic councillors have done nothing about our streets, about walkability, pedestrian safety, traffic calming, or bicycle lanes — much less fix our decaying pavement and crumbling sidewalks. In fact, since most of them were on the previous council, their egregious inactivity on these issues extends back more than six years. But who’s … click below for more ↓

Water Crisis? What Crisis?

Collingwood / Council / Ineptitude and bungling / Utilities: electricity and water2 Comments

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You’d think that a town with a supposed water crisis so acute it had to pass a job-killing, revenue-depleting bylaw to stop all new construction for the next two (or four or more) years, would rush to fix a leak that lets treated water run into the storm sewers. But for three weeks, the town has let this leak on Sproule Ave. run away, doing nothing more than placing safety cones around it. You also might wonder why no one on council asked staff if there were ongoing leaks or related problems that needed repair BEFORE the bylaw was passed … click below for more ↓

Saunderson’s Job-Killing ICBL Continued

Collingwood / Council / Development & Growth / Ethics and behaviour / Financial follies / Hospital / Ineptitude and bungling / Planning & Policies / Publicity & Communications / Uncategorized6 Comments

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James Madison, one of the US’s Founding Fathers said that a government “…without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a tragedy or a farce, or perhaps both.” Sure reads like someone describing our own council and their refusal to listen to the public during their discussion on the recent interim control bylaw (ICBL) that killed growth, development, and jobs in Collingwood: both a farce and a tragedy.* Thomas Vincent, developer of the Balmoral Estates adult lifestyle community in Collingwood,  wrote a letter to council just before this debacle, criticizing among other things, the … click below for more ↓

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