Category: Collingwood

Comments, thoughts and musings about my hometown: Collingwood, Ontario. And some local politics, too, with my comments as a municipal councillor.

Rules for The Block, different rules for us

Collingwood / Council / Ethics & morality / Ethics and behaviour / Planning & Policies4 Comments

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Ever apply to sit on a town board or committee? If so, you’ll be familiar with the form to the right. It’s the town’s application form. Click on it to see or download the full form. Everyone who wants to sit on a town board of committee must complete and sign it. Everyone, that is, except the people The Block appoint to the committees and boards they want to control. One set of rules for The Block, another for the rest of us. How very accountable and transparent. In June, The Block illegally (not to mention unethically and immorally) “fired” the democratically appointed ……… click below for more ↓

Misleading mouthpieces

Collingwood / Council / Ethics and behaviour / Planning & PoliciesLeave a comment

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Contrary to what you might expect, I am not surprised that the Enterprise Bulletin recently printed a letter replete with disinformation and disingenuous claims from someone who might be best described as one of The Block’s more rabid mouthpieces. Call it an editorial fart. My faith in any objectivity, neutrality of, or fact-checking by the EB was long ago disabused. The EB has been The Block’s tame outlet even before the current editor took the job. That the EB continues to run a similarly biased, inaccurate column by another of The Block’s mouthpieces (albeit one of lesser talent) merely underscores my impression of ……… click below for more ↓

Uncommunicative again

Collingwood / Council / Ethics and behaviour / Fonts & Layout / Publicity & Communications / Typography2 Comments

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Did you receive your “spring” newsletter from the town? The one delivered on the first day of summer (or later), lacking any actual news… yes, that one. To me it appears as clumsily formatted and poorly written as all the previous issues. Another one that likely wouldn’t even get a passing grade in a high school art class. Since the town continues its race to the bottom of the design barrel, I won’t reiterate all the problems in detail, since they just repeat those already exposed. I’ll just throw in a few comments (read here and here and here for ……… click below for more ↓

More relevant words from Nixonland

Collingwood / Council / Ethics and behaviour / Politics / US Politics / What I'm Reading NowOne Comment

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Once again, as I continue to read through Anthony Summers’ biography of Richard Nixon, The Arrogance of Power (Penguin Books, 2000), I am struck by the uncanny resonance of many comments quoted within it to local politics. It’s like people living in the 1950s had a device through which they could view the politics of today, see the politicians on our own council and were reflecting on them, instead of their contemporaries. Some time viewing device right out of science fiction. Of course, we know they are speaking and writing of Richard Nixon and his activities, but nonetheless… the word ……… click below for more ↓

The accomplishments of council

Collingwood / Council / Ethics and behaviour / Humour & SatireLeave a comment

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“You really are negative about our council,” the woman said to me as I stood in the grocery store, trying to decide whether to converse or pick mushrooms from the bin. But she insisted on the former. “Your blog is always about the bad things they do. You ought to try to say something positive now and then.” “What if I can’t think of anything?” I replied. “Oh come on,” she said. “They can’t be totally bad. Everyone does something good. Even them. You shouldn’t just write about the bad things. Write about the good things, too. It will improve ……… click below for more ↓

Alger Hiss, Richard Nixon and Collingwood

Collingwood / Council / History & Biography / Politics / US Politics / What I'm Reading NowOne Comment

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Remember the case of Alger Hiss? I didn’t think so. It was before your time. Mine too. But let me jog your memory, just in case you’re older than I am. Or perhaps just well read in recent history. Hiss was a US government employee, a diplomat at the centre of a House Un-American Advisory Committee (HUAC) investigation in 1950. He was accused of being a Soviet spy and eventually sent to jail (coincidentally on the same day George Orwell died…). Ring a bell? How about the Pumpkin Papers? Remember HUAC? You know, the committee investigating Communism in America, the one that ……… click below for more ↓

The definition of evil

Council / Critical Thinking / Language & Grammar / PhilosophyLeave a comment

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I try to choose my words carefully. Words have power, words can create emotions, words linger and stick with us. Words matter. Words can be tools of great precision and effect. So when I hear or read them being abused, misused or simply inappropriately chosen, my hackles rise. I want to make corrections. I want to insert my idea of the better choice into the sentence. My Facebook followers know how I react (and react too often…) to misplaced apostrophes, misspellings and improper verb tense. It’s the aging editor in me, I suppose, plus my passionate love of writing and ……… click below for more ↓

Power, naked ambition, and corruption

Collingwood / Council / Ethics and behaviour / Planning & Policies7 Comments

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No matter how many times you watch the film, Titanic, the ending is always the same: the ship hits the iceberg. Sort of like watching Collingwood Council these days. They just keep hitting the iceberg. And hitting it and hitting it and hitting it. But unlike the Titanic’s crew, our feckless crew is doing it deliberately. Their goal is to sink the ship. And they’re doing a bang-up job. Literally. Of course, they don’t plan to go down with the ship themselves: that’s the fate left to our town institutions and facilities. They’re just doing the steering. Into the iceberg. Although ……… click below for more ↓

Yellow Journalism

Collingwood / Council / Ethics and behaviour / Planning & PoliciesOne Comment

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Here’s an interesting approach to developing good relations with your print media advertisers: take their money, publish their full-colour advertisement, then challenge their content, their integrity and their claims in a story that doesn’t present all the facts. Then wonder why your other advertisers may be nervous about this tactic… and wonder why print media is in trouble. That’s just what the Collingwood Connection did recently. They accepted and ran an ad last week from Collus/Powerstream – an innocuous, non-political, full-colour ad that modestly promoted the utility and its partnership with the town – then challenged it in an piece this week (the original, online piece ……… click below for more ↓

The 50% Solution

Collingwood / Council / Ethics and behaviour / Planning & PoliciesOne Comment

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Imagine you want to go out for dinner with a friend. Get some wings and beer. You like mild dry rub wings, and a nice, crisp lager. Your friend likes sticky and spicy, with a dark stout. The restaurant will bring out the food and drinks split according to your wishes. And your bill. That means whoever pays for the meal gets to decide what you both get on the table. You can’t afford to pay for the whole meal yourself, and you don’t want your friend to pay for it because you don’t want to share a basket of hot ……… click below for more ↓

The Leadership Crisis

Books & Reviews / Collingwood / Council / Ethics and behaviour / Municipal Politics / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

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In his latest book, The Leadership Crisis, Gord Hume defines seven characteristics – the Seven Cs – of great political leadership*. See how many you can recognize as attributes within our own council: Competencies, including people, organizational, business and strategic. Character, and its traits, values and virtues; integrity. Commitment, including aspiration, engagement, perseverance and sacrifice. Charisma, that unquantifiable attribute that political leaders either have or don’t. Communication, through effective messaging that inspires, informs and influences. Context, an understanding of what’s going on around them. Culture, and how to develop, create, change and advance that culture I think you can see ……… click below for more ↓

The CAO’s expenses

Collingwood / Council / Ethics and behaviour / User fees and costsOne Comment

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Earlier this year, I filed a Freedom of Information (FOI) Act request to see the expense records of Collingwood’s Interim CAO for 2015 and 2016 to the end of March. You can read these records by clicking on the links above. Let me start by saying a few things: first, the interim CAO is paid $225,000 a year – roughly $50,000-$75,000 more than his peers in similar and local municipalities – PLUS, as I understand it, he gets a car allowance paid by taxpayers. This council has twice extended his contract, after secretive backroom discussion among themselves. Second, the town ……… click below for more ↓

Two conferences and a show

Collingwood / Council / Ethics and behaviour / Municipal Politics / Personal Reminiscences / Planning & Policies / Provincial Politics / WaterOne Comment

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I had the honour and the enjoyment of attending two municipal conferences last week. While no longer directly involved in politics, I am able to keep my finger in some of the political pies through my current work for an NGO. Plus, I like to remain informed and up-to-date about politics and governance, and am always looking for opportunities to increase my knowledge and understanding of pretty much any topic. The first event was the Ontario Water Conference, in Windsor. While predominantly a technical and operations event for facility managers and operators, it also has a good political component where utility board ……… click below for more ↓

Banning Phosphorus

Collingwood / Planning & Policies / Water3 Comments

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In 2014, Toledo experienced a water crisis that caused the city to issue a “do not use” warning for more than 500,000 residents. They had to rely on bottled water; boiling wasn’t safe because it further released toxins into the water. That crisis was caused by unsafe levels of the toxin Microcystin in the city’s treated water. The toxin came from the unprecedented algal bloom in Lake Erie; a huge swath of the west end of the lake blossomed with the algae. The algae were growing rapidly because of the increasingly high nutrient load in lakes and streams. In particular: ……… click below for more ↓

The stench of entitlement

Collingwood / Council / Ethics and behaviour3 Comments

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You’d think politicians would learn from the recent investigations into Senate spending and the Mike Duffy trial, that Canadians have no tolerance for the gimme, gimme, gimme of politicians. Canadians don’t like the smell of a sense of entitlement. A lesson lost, it seems, on our own Collingwood Council. The stench of entitlement is strong at the table these days. And much it emanates from Councillor “Senator” Jeffrey. Last year, Jeffrey cut the cheese when she decided to pursue personal political ambitions by getting onto the board of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities. Since the FCM board meets all over Canada – ……… click below for more ↓

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