Staff and administration – Page 2

My Report About the Report About the Report

As I predicted (correctly) late last year, Collingwood Council was given a dumbed-down, $700,000-as-important-as-clean-drinking-water-report-about-the-judicial-inquiry-report. More than 900 pages of the original report reduced to a mere 15 to report on the report. And as I also predicted, it would include pie charts. You can read it here: “STAFF REPORT #CAO2021-02 Phase One – Collingwood Judicial Inquiry Next Steps. You can also look at the PowerPoint presentation made to council — which, as I also correctly predicted, would have the report “reduced to a dozen bullets on PowerPoint slides, written in a large font and read aloud, slowly, at a council ……… click below for more ↓

A Municipal Challenge to Democracy?

2021-02-02 2021-02-02 Collingwood / Council / Deceit / deception & secrecy / Disrespect and bad behaviour / Entitlement / Ethics and behaviour / Planning & Policies / Publicity & Communications / Saunderson's Vindictive Judicial Inquiry / Staff and administration / User fees and costsLeave a comment

Collingwood has joined other local municipalities asking the province to revamp its Municipal Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (MFIPPA; a guide from the Information and Privacy Commissioner to the Act is also available here) to make the process more restrictive and less open. While some of those changes might seem appropriate to outsiders, I see buried in the wording of the request some dark challenges to our democracy. The story in Collingwood Today is titled, “Freedom of information rules ‘archaic’ and in need of modernization, says Collingwood clerk.” Democracies depend on some core attributes: openness, accountability, transparency, ……… click below for more ↓

An Honourable Mayor?

2021-01-21 2021-01-21 Collingwood / Council / Disrespect and bad behaviour / Entitlement / Ethics and behaviour / Saunderson's Vindictive Judicial Inquiry / Staff and administration8 Comments

Mayor Brian Saunderson has announced he is running for nomination to the provincial Progressive Conservative party in our riding to be able to stand as the candidate for MPP. According to a story in Collingwood Today, he is not stepping down from his role as mayor, and will not do so even if he wins the nomination: Should Saunderson receive the nomination, he said he would not be stepping back from his duties as mayor of Collingwood unless he were to be successful and elected in 2022. I believe that this poses a threat of both real and perceived conflicts ……… click below for more ↓

Striving for Mediocrity

2021-01-20 2021-01-31 Collingwood / Council / Disrespect and bad behaviour / Entitlement / Ethics and behaviour / Local media / Saunderson's Vindictive Judicial Inquiry / Staff and administration3 Comments

On a council laden with dunces, deadwood, and dullards, it must be some consolation to our elected representatives, that they can at least claim to be less mediocre than Councillor Steve Berman. We all need someone to measure ourselves against, I suppose, and a low bar is so much easier to rise above. Berman’s first year in office was spent mostly consuming oxygen at the table and saying nothing of consequence. Of so little consequence were his words that even the normally sycophantic local media hardly ever bothered to reprint them. But when the pandemic struck and council retreated into ……… click below for more ↓

As Important as Clean Drinking Water?

2020-12-19 2020-12-19 Collingwood / Council / Ethics and behaviour / Financial follies / Planning & Policies / Saunderson's Vindictive Judicial Inquiry / Staff and administration5 Comments

I wonder how the people of Walkerton would feel about Collingwood CAO’s statement, reported in Collingwood Today, that implementing the 300-plus recommendations of the Saunderson Vindictive Judicial Inquiry (SVJI) is “equivalent with the top priorities we have, like providing clean drinking water.” I wonder how many people in our town will be saved from a painful, water-borne illness and possible death if, for example, the town encourages the province to implement recommendation number two: 2 Describing the mayor as both the head of Council and chief executive officer blurs the fact that the mayor is the head of Council and ……… click below for more ↓

Red light cameras for Collingwood?

2018-09-19 2018-09-19 Collingwood / Council / Election 2018 / Planning & Policies / Staff and administrationLeave a comment

A small but very irate number of residents have broached with me the topic of installing red light cameras at Collingwood’s traffic intersections. I hadn’t really thought about it – except to acknowledge that traffic seems to be getting busier. I’ve seen traffic backed up for 500-1,000m at numerous intersections in town – even on weekday afternoons, and seen it enough times to recognize it is the future here. More cars means an increase in the number of bad, inattentive or aggressive drivers will also go up. Although I don’t know if the percentage remains the same, the number of ……… click below for more ↓

Airports and opportunities vs. The Block

2018-05-24 2018-05-24 Collingwood / Council / deception & secrecy / Disrespect and bad behaviour / Planning & Policies / Publicity & Communications / Staff and administrationLeave a comment

Strategic Vision: To become a premier regional commercial airport that stimulates the socioeconomic development of Simcoe County and the City of Barrie by improving connectivity, enhancing the competitiveness of the region and improving the quality of life for its residents. Mission Statement: To drive the region’s economic prosperity, enhance business opportunities, increase the region’s competitive position and support the travel needs of the community through increased connectivity. So opens a report on the opportunities and challenges facing the Simcoe Regional Airport, presented to the county’s Committee of the Whole session, May 22. You can see it here, starting at page ……… click below for more ↓

Show me the documents!

2018-05-17 2018-05-20 Collingwood / Council / Social Order & Disorder / Staff and administration / Utilities: electricity and waterLeave a comment

The trolls and troglodytes on social media are whinging again about allegedly missing documents that relate to the 2012 sale of 50% of Collus. They want you to think there was a conspiracy by the utility staff not to release crucial documents. There wasn’t. Period. No matter how many times this gets debunked, no matter how often it gets corrected, it rises again and again amongst the ignorati. This time it was the Block’s bullshit judicial inquiry (aka their campaign platform) that revived this particular zombie – in part because The Block’s few remaining followers (the trolls) want to keep ……… click below for more ↓

Madigan’s motion jeopardizes town

2018-01-26 2018-01-26 Collingwood / Council / Development & Growth / Disrespect and bad behaviour / Ethics and behaviour / Staff and administration2 Comments

On January 15, Councillor Bob Madigan made a motion (seconded, of course, by his puppetmaster, Deputy Mayor Saunderson) to limit the progress of the Indigo/Eden-Oak/McNabb development at the south end of town. Madigan’s motion demanded that, …council provide no further approvals to the Eden Oak/McNabb development until such time as council as a whole has the opportunity to review the concerns expressed by the neighbouring residents and agree upon any mitigation options. (Yes, I wondered who wrote it for him, too… whoever did it wasn’t very bright because he or she failed to identify what those mitigation measures should entail, ……… click below for more ↓

Bullshit and hypocrisy again

2018-01-22 2018-02-04 Collingwood / Council / Disrespect and bad behaviour / Ethics and behaviour / Hospital / Staff and administration / TaxesLeave a comment

You have to hand it to our Deputy Mayor: for all his many, many faults, he does do two things remarkably well: hypocrisy and bullshit. Neither does he do in halfway measures. No, when he dons their mantle, he wears the emperor’s new clothes with pride, head to toe. At January 15’s council meeting, Brian took both bullshit and hypocrisy to stratospherically new levels. Astounding levels seldom seen outside today’s White House; truly breathtaking to see it here in our little town. More proof the kakistocracy is alive and well in Collingwood. At 2:23:04 Brian made a notice of motion for ……… click below for more ↓

Who ya gonna call?

2018-01-12 2018-01-12 Collingwood / Council / deception & secrecy / Development & Growth / Ethics and behaviour / Planning & Policies / Staff and administrationLeave a comment

This song keeps running through my head: If there’s something strange in you neighborhood Who you gonna call? (your councillor) If there’s something weird And it don’t look good Who you gonna call? (your councillor) With apologies to Ray Parker, composer of the Ghostbusters theme song. More than three years after I left council, I still get calls from residents, still get stopped in grocery stores or when I’m walking my dog, dragged into conversations with residents unhappy with local politics and how they’ve been treated by this council. Specifically by members of The Block Seven. I get asked about ……… click below for more ↓

EPCOR and The Block’s Big Lie

2017-11-27 2022-05-25 Collingwood / Council / Development & Growth / Disrespect and bad behaviour / Ethics and behaviour / Publicity & Communications / Staff and administration / Utilities: electricity and waterLeave a comment

For all their evils and their wrongs, the Soviets did some things very well: propaganda and disinformation. As one writer commented in the Spectator, “Communist ideology dismissed the idea of truth as a bourgeois construct. What mattered was power; and you baptised as truth those doctrines which provided it.” Stalin defined truth as what he said it was. The Soviets were such masters at it from an early stage that George Orwell declared that history stopped in 1936; after that there was only propaganda. So good were they at it that their methods and techniques were copied by other states ……… click below for more ↓

Collus in purgatory

2017-10-20 2017-10-20 Collingwood / Council / Disrespect and bad behaviour / Ethics and behaviour / Staff and administration / Utilities: electricity and water3 Comments

Purgatory is how a staff person described to me the current situation of our local electrical utility, Collus-PowerStream (CPS). It’s the result of The Block’s and the administration’s incessant interference, manipulations, contrivances and scheming over the past three years. And it was evident, Wednesday, at the meeting where CPS presented its draft Distribution System Plan, a strategic plan for future maintenance and growth. They’re in purgatory because The Block have made the utility’s future uncertain. They cannot accurately craft business plans, strategic plans, cannot make any long-range plans for growth or sustainable development because they never know what new hurdle ……… click below for more ↓

The secret costs of the EPCOR deal

2017-10-19 2017-10-23 Collingwood / Council / Disrespect and bad behaviour / Ethics and behaviour / Publicity & Communications / Staff and administration / Taxes / Utilities: electricity and water2 Comments

Whether or not The Block sell our share of our public electrical utility to the for-profit, Edmonton-based EPCOR, it will still cost taxpayers millions. And I don’t mean just the rising costs of sole-sourced lawyers and buddy consultants the administration has hired (well over $1 million already, and the bills keep coming in). I’m talking about the hidden costs The Block won’t divulge because they don’t want taxpayers to realize how really bad a deal they’ve made with this devil. And it all happens behind closed doors, Monday, Oct. 23, 2017. No public input allowed on the sale of our ……… click below for more ↓

The Block are privatizing our public assets

2017-09-30 2017-10-05 Collingwood / Council / Development & Growth / Disrespect and bad behaviour / Ethics and behaviour / Planning & Policies / Staff and administration / Taxes / User fees and costsLeave a comment

So Brian and his Block minions want to sell our airport. Our publicly-owned asset. And they’re doing it without even the pretence of the courtesy to tell us why. No public input, no public engagement, no open discussion over it. In the flaccid Connection story, it notes, In November, 2016, deputy mayor Brian Saunderson asked Clearview Township Deputy Mayor Barry Burton if his municipality was interested in taking over operation of the airport. As usual, the slavish local media drool over their buddy Brian, but cleverly neglect to point out that Saunderson is neither the spokesperson for the town (and ……… click below for more ↓