Strat Plan Part 4: Economic Vitality

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

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What, you may ask, is meant by the term “Economic Vitality” – the third objective in our town’s strategic-plan-in-the-works? Apparently it’s one of those motherhood statements people make on soapboxes and campaign platforms that have little grist in them to mill into actuality. Sure, we all want a town that has a lively, thriving economy. but how do we achieve it? No one has an answer – not one-size-fits-all answer. certainly it isn’t found in the woo-hoo strategic plan. The economy’s health depends on creating a suitable, supportive environment that both attracts and sustains business and commerce. Let’s start with an ……… click below for more ↓

Strat Plan Part 3: The Waterfront

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The waterfront. It defines us geographically, historically and culturally. What could be more important to Collingwood than its waterfront that covers the entire northern border of this sleepy, lakeside town? Well, pretty much anything else it seems, if you you’re on Collingwood Council. Pick the most irrelevant, pointless, self-aggrandizing effort – like rewriting the Code of Conduct or flying around the country to party at taxpayers’ expense – and this council will eagerly pounce on it as a priority rather than deal with waterfront issues. Council is determined to hold up growth and development on this all-important area until sometime ……… click below for more ↓

Strat Plan Part 2: The Shuffle Game

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

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In the second part of my critique of Collingwood’s woo-hoo strategic plan, I will look at the shuffle game. This is where consultants give contestants – I mean participants – a limited series of options and ask them to shuffle these around in order of their perceived priority. Then the results are collated and the one whose list looks most like the final version wins. There are five separate lists given to contestants. Think of them as strategic plan bingo cards: Accountable Local Government Public Access to a Revitalized Waterfront Economic Vitality Healthy Lifestyle Culture and the Arts Participants get ……… click below for more ↓

Reading Tennyson’s Ulysses

Books & Reviews / Personal Reminiscences / Poetry & Lyrics / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

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Last weekend, while watching the delightful movie, The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, I heard Bill Nighy make a wedding speech that included lines from one of my favourite poems: Ulysses by Alfred Lord Tennyson. I recognized it immediately and it made me open the poem and read it again. The poem was written by Tennyson in 1833, but not published until 1842. I can’t recall exactly when I first read it, but it was in high school, in the 1960s. I’ve read it many times since. It’s funny how one can read into a poem something entirely different on another ……… click below for more ↓

Strategic Planning, Part One: The Woo-Hoo Factor

Collingwood / Council / Development & Growth / Planning & Policies8 Comments

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There are, in general, two kinds of municipal strategic plans. One is pragmatic and practical. It tells you what you need to build, fix or replace, when you need to do it, how much it will cost, and where the money will come from. This is the stuff a council grounded in reality can use to budget, plan sensibly, and maintain the community’s infrastructure. It’s a roadmap that leads to a well-defined destination. The other kind of plan is best described by the term woo-hoo. It’s an airy, feel-good exercise that spews forth happy catch phrases, the more nebulous the better. ……… click below for more ↓

Time of Use Billing

Provincial Politics / Social Order & DisorderLeave a comment

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Until I sold my business, a few years ago, and started working from home again, I didn’t realize how much of an aggressive assault on many Ontarians – especially seniors and stay-at-home parents – our hydro time-of-use  (TOU) billing is. I had a naïve belief that it was fair. A user-pay balance. A tool to encourage us to conserve and use our appliances more wisely. And I’ve always been a big believer in conservation. But time-of-use is not what we hoped. It targets the people generally least able to afford it. Hydro rates have risen rapidly under the current government: we in Ontario already ……… click below for more ↓

Going Clear Reviewed

Books & Reviews / Critical Thinking / Cults / Faith / Pseudoscience & Quackery / What I'm Reading NowOne Comment

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[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19YGhuORcJk] I found it difficult to read Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief by Lawrence Wright (Random House, 2013): it gave me a sense of unease, forcing a frequent over-the-shoulder glance to see if someone was following me just because I was reading it. But nonetheless, it proved compelling – so much so that I dropped all other books and read it cover to cover, uninterrupted earlier this summer. It is by far the most complete, detailled expose of the church I’ve read  to date, and it made me wonder, why hasn’t all of this come to light before? Or did ……… click below for more ↓

Fiddling While Rome Burns

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

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You know that legend about Nero fiddling while around him Rome was burning? It’s a popular metaphor for political cluelessness, for inaction, procrastination, for politicians oblivious to the important business of the city while they play games. For municipal leaders who focus on the petty, the trivial, the irrelevant and the self-serving, while major issues are ignored. Pretty much sums up Collingwood Council’s record to date. Fiddling with irrelevancies. To be fair, they’ve only been in office eight months and probably haven’t got around to focusing on important things. Still, you have to scratch your head and wonder why council wastes its collective energy on ……… click below for more ↓

Another Secretive, Self-Serving Committee

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This week, Collingwood Council passed a motion to appoint the Block Five to a new standing committee. The standing committee system, you will recall, is a system of secretive committees that operates predominantly out of the public eye, with limited council attendance, and often without even media presence. Committees conduct town business beyond the pale of accountability. Here’s what they passed (in a 6-3 vote*): THAT Council approve the Striking Committee recommendation and appoint the following members to the Environmental Services Standing Committee: Deputy Mayor Brian Saunderson, Councillor Tim Fryer, Councillor Cam Ecclestone, Councillor Kathy Jeffery, and Councillor Deb Doherty. Saunderson and Fryer are, ……… click below for more ↓

Nailing Collingwood’s Door Shut to Business

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

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Councillor Deb Doherty seems eager to cement this council’s already ugly but deserved reputation for being hostile to business. This week she made a motion to re-open the always-contentious sign bylaw, apparently in order to impose draconian restrictions on business signs THAT Council direct Staff to review Sign By-law 2012-110 with respect to sign height and any other revisions or amendments as deemed appropriate by the Chief Building Official; AND FURTHER THAT the report be presented through the Development and Operations Standing Committee not later than August 31, 2015. Sign bylaws are necessary, but always contentious to debate. Municipalities want to limit clutter. Business owners ……… click below for more ↓

Reincarnation as a Consultant or a Psychic?

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  A wag met Nasrudin. In his pocket he had an egg. “Tell me, Mullah, are you any good at guessing games?” “Not bad,” said Nasrudin. “Very well then: tell me what I have in my pocket.” “Give me a clue, then.” “It is shaped like an egg, it is yellow and white inside, and it looks like an egg.” “Some sort of cake,” said Nasrudin.* Should I have the chance to do my life all over again, I’m not sure which career I would prefer most: a psychic or a consultant. One takes money from people because he is ……… click below for more ↓

Victor Hugo’s Hunchback

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I have just finished listening to a well-read audio book (in English) of Victor Hugo’s 1831 novel, Hunchback of Notre Dame, or more properly, Notre Dame de Paris, as the original title was written. I had read the novel several years ago in a more recent Penguin edition, but hearing it on my peregrinations around town with the dogs gave me time to focus on some sections I had glossed over in the written form. Unlike the abysmal Disney animation of 1996, and unlike all the films and TV series that have been made of the story since the first (Esmeralda, 1905), the novel ……… click below for more ↓

The Antis at Sunset Point

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

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There are always those who don’t want change. Any change upsets them. Anything that’s new, different, exciting, challenging or just unusual bothers them and want it stopped. They want a steady state, where nothing happens, nothing changes, nothing is new. Stop growth, stop development, stop change. Some of them are the ‘last in’ crowd – the recent arrivals who don’t want any more newcomers because newcomers will change things, and they will change the reasons the ‘last-in’ group came here. They want to be the last ones to arrive and to shut the door after themselves. They want things to ……… click below for more ↓

More Chinese Wisdom: Confucius and Council

Council / Ethics & morality / Ethics and behaviour / PoliticsLeave a comment

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I was reading The Analects, this weekend, in the recent Penguin Classics edition translated by Annping Chin, a book I acquired on my recent mini-vacation in Toronto (one of about 30 books I purchased – a good trip for me). Confucius – Master Kong – is remarkable for his relevance to today’s politics and his insight into human behaviour, especially in a bureaucracy. Chin’s version is wonderfully clear and accessible, and her notes help clarify the passages where Westerners like me might find difficulty in understanding context (historical and cultural). My purpose in reading The Analects this time is to ……… click below for more ↓

What’s Up With Tim Fryer?

Collingwood / Council / Ethics and behaviourOne Comment

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Fledgling councillors may be excused for gaffes, gaucheries and solecisms they make in their first month or so in office. They’re new, inexperienced, dazzled by their recent election success, so we cut them some slack. And there are all these shiny things to distract a councillor: procedure, voting, reading, motions, shuffling paper, approving minutes, showing up… But after more than six months, one expects them to know what they are doing and get down to the business of the municipality. And we expect them to have read ALL the relevant legislation, policies and codes that govern them. Councillor Tim Fryer ……… click below for more ↓

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