Category: Collingwood

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

Creating a New Citizens’ Group

Collingwood / Council / Development & Growth / Humour & SatireLeave a comment

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Recently, I’ve been told that what this town needs is a new citizen’s action group. I imagine it will be a group of residents concerned that the precedents set by the last council might spread to this one. That’s clearly a worrisome trend to some folks. Like progress, good ideas must be nipped in the bud. What this town needs, it seems, is a group of citizens who will eagerly file OMB challenges to stop any chance at growth, development, prosperity and jobs before they become endemic. Citizens who will fight to retain our brownfields, to ensure we have store closings, half-finished developments and the slow withering away of the ……… click below for more ↓

Sit on Your Hands

Collingwood / Council / Development & Growth / Ethics and behaviour / Planning & Policies2 Comments

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Sit on your hands and don’t do anything. That’s in essence the advice in the editorial of the Enterprise-Bulletin, June 3. It’s a strongly anti-business message: telling the business community, the municipality, developers, and everyone around us that Collingwood is, once again, closed for business. Which coincides with the anti-business attitude of several members of the current council, but is hardly good for the community’s economic health. The editorial concludes: By all means, let the waterfront plan and the strategic plan pursue their course and hold off any decision’s (sic) on Assaff’s Block 9 ask until after that time…* Hold off developing ……… click below for more ↓

Waterfront No-Brainer

Collingwood / Council / Development & Growth / Ethics and behaviour2 Comments

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Two terms ago, the public and media often referred to council as “the gong show” – no doubt from the number of inane comments and witless questions made at the table. One wonders if that nickname should not be revisited for this term. This week’s gong for inanity goes to Deputy Mayor Brian Saunderson for his comments after a public presentation by a local developer about purchasing an unused bit of town land. Saunderson clearly hasn’t grasped the procedure by which council members should not comment on or to delegations, and only ask questions of clarification. But why should he ……… click below for more ↓

Killing Our Culture

Collingwood / Council / Culture / Development & Growth / Ethics and behaviourOne Comment

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Collingwood has killed Jazz & Blues at the Station – a popular, long-running, local cultural event second in audience only to the Elvis Festival. It brought some of Ontario’s top jazz and blues talent to play at the Museum. The hundreds of people assembled every Wednesday for the free concert – sometimes more than 400 in a single night, many of them coming from Blue Mountain, Clearview and Wasaga Beach – will be disappointed. As are the organizers, who have been trying unsuccessfully since late last year to get the town to commit to promised funding. All those people who came downtown ……… click below for more ↓

The Story of Chicken Little

Collingwood / Humour & SatireLeave a comment

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Chicken Little was out one morning walking around town. It was a fine morning, and he decided he wanted a cup of coffee. He wanted one so much could even smell the coffee in the air. So he walked into a local restaurant. But then he stopped and his mouth fell open in horror. He saw three horses sitting together at a table. Chicken Little didn’t like horses in general, but these were the Three Horses of the Apocalypse. The Three Horses he hated more than any other horses in the whole wide world. The most evil, nastiest, ugliest, horses he had ……… click below for more ↓

Good News for the Rec Facilities

Collingwood / Council / Development & Growth / Planning & Policies / User fees and costsLeave a comment

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A story in this week’s Collingwood Connection vindicates the decision to build the two new rec facilities last term. According to the story, usage of the two facilities – the new arena at Central Park and the renovated Centennial Pool – is soaring. Plus as an added benefit, Centennial pool is able to host competitions all year round – and it does. Just drive by it on a swim meet weekend and you’ll see the parking lot full; dozens of families attend, many of them staying here for shopping, food or even overnight. It’s a great economic benefit, not merely ……… click below for more ↓

Openness and Transparency?

Collingwood / Council / Ethics and behaviour / Municipal PoliticsLeave a comment

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Legitimacy is earned through accountability. Accountability is produced through transparency. Those words are from an opinion piece by Ian Lee, published in the Ottawa Citizen, back in 2008. Important words; words that should be carved above our own council table in large letters. Although it seems like he was writing about Collingwood Council, Lee was actually writing about the need for more accountability and openness in the public sector, especially about stating expenses and costs of federal government projects and initiatives. Lee wanted to “…ensure the accountability of public policy expenditures to Canadians – who pay the bills – thereby ensuring ……… click below for more ↓

Propaganda?

Collingwood / Council / Planning & Policies3 Comments

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Last term, when council sent out community newsletters to keep residents informed, the illiterati screamed these were ‘propaganda’ and a waste of tax dollars.* Now this council has done the same thing and these nattering nabobs of negativity have raised their voices and screamed… nothing. Their silence is deafening. Well, they wouldn’t want to embarrass their friends on council, would they? Even if this council repeats the same practice as those they reviled last term… Let’s not dwell on the hypocrisy of the sycophants and bloggers, else we will never get further (it would fill pages and pages to recount…). Let’s instead look at ……… click below for more ↓

Illegal or Just Inappropriate Meetings?

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

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Collingwood’s three standing committees consist solely of three members of council, each.* These committees of three each hold regular, published monthly meetings, hear public delegations, address public issues, post an agenda, receive staff reports, vote on issues, have recorded minutes, have staff to record them, and make recommendations back to council. In other words they are treated identically to any regular council meeting.  Their recommendations are read into the council minutes and voted upon. Yet none of these committees has a quorum (majority) of council on it. When one person is absent, as has happened several times since they were struck, the committee consists of ……… click below for more ↓

Chinese Wisdom

Collingwood / Council / Ethics and behaviour / Philosophy / Politics / What I'm Reading Now2 Comments

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As I promised in an earlier post, here are some of the epithets and sayings found in some of the Four Books of the Chinese canon. I think these are particularly relevant to politics, especially local politics. Hence my commentary after several of them.* Wikipedia gives us an overview of Confucius’ political philosophy in the Analects: Confucius’ political beliefs were rooted in his belief that a good ruler would be self-disciplined, would govern his subjects through education and by his own example, and would seek to correct his subjects with love and concern rather than punishment and coercion. “If the ……… click below for more ↓

Signs – of the Apocalypse?

Collingwood / Council / Critical Thinking / Development & Growth / Planning & PoliciesLeave a comment

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Councillor Cam Ecclestone made a comment at council earlier this month that he had been contacted by several residents concerned about the new sign on the Rexall Drug store on Huron Street, its size and colours. Coun. Doherty chimed in about it with similar comments. Aside from the question why anyone would contact a member of council whose sluggish performance at the table would win an award for best impersonation of a somnambulist, one has to wonder who these residents are who are so concerned about a rather ordinary corporate/franchise sign. Well, I mean aside from the handful of petty ideologues ……… click below for more ↓

The Not-My-Fault Dance

Collingwood / Council / Ethics and behaviour / Taxes / User fees and costs2 Comments

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There’s a story in this weekend’s Collingwood Connection about the PUC board meeting this week. The board confirmed that council’s dumping unexpected costs on the utility will mean an unplanned increase in the cost of your water this year. One of our council representatives tried to dance around it as if he wasn’t among the causes of that increase. This hurtful rate increase happened because council unwisely moved the budgeted cost of hydrant maintenance from the town’s fire service budget – where it had had been for years with no additional impact on taxes – and stuck it on the PUC (without consulting the PUC board), where it will ……… click below for more ↓

Rethinking Parking

Collingwood / Council / Development & Growth / Municipal Politics / Planning & PoliciesLeave a comment

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Parking in Collingwood – especially downtown – has been a contentious issue since at least the mid-1980s. Numerous studies have been done advocating a variety of answers, none of them entirely satisfactory to everyone. The factions of free versus paid parking have been warring as long as I can recall. No council has managed to fully come to grips with the issue. To compound the issue, town staff have tended to weigh in on the side of paid parking in no small part because of the revenue it brings in, which helps offset the expenses of the bylaw department (and justifies ……… click below for more ↓

Someone’s Paying Attention

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

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I was glad to see the Connection is attending and reporting on some of the council standing committee meetings. The media need to be there to shine a light on what seems to the rest of the town as a secretive, unaccountable process. At least the Connection is paying attention. The story that came out of the meeting is titled, “Lobbyist registry could make things complicated: Collingwood town clerk.” Apparently the EB didn’t think it was worth writing about. The EB doesn’t get it. Clerk Sara Almas told the committee: “Not only does it capture developers and contractors, it could include ……… click below for more ↓

Turning Positives into Negatives

Collingwood / Council / Development & Growth / Planning & PoliciesLeave a comment

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Once upon a time, when George Czerny was the publisher, the Enterprise-Bulletin newspaper was an avid and active local promoter: the indefatigable cheerleader for the town; for its events, activities, clubs and organizations. It was the proud voice of Collingwood. Not so, today. The paper seems to have lost that community passion. Today it comes across as bitter, ideologically-driven, full of negativity and hidden agendas. Take a look at the EB’s story about the Curling Club renovations. Here should be a positive story about the collaboration between the town and the Curling Club to share costs, renovate and restore one of the town’s most ……… click below for more ↓

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