The incident
Picton doesn’t get Wellington. It’s part rivalry. Think Sparta and Athens. It’s part sibling indifference. You look after you, and I’ll take care of mine. Some of it is in the setup. Radiating circles of relevance/concern/interdependence tend to drop off quickly as you move away from the decision-making centre. It’s human nature. (Sorry, South Bay […]
See SPOT run
One of the more notable strengths of the County’s current senior leadership team is its demonstrated capacity to learn and adapt. These aren’t empty words offered lightly or to curry favour. This column regularly casts its lens upon the smouldering and festering bits of the County’s business. It is useful, therefore, for readers to know […]
Red flags
What some folks appear to be missing from the Prince Edward County Affordable Housing Corporation (Housing Corp) story is that failing to properly create and manage affordable housing threatens to jeopardize progress for a long, long time. Done badly—and managed badly—an eight-unit apartment block will become a massive and expensive headache this municipality can ill […]
A parable
In the primary coloured cartoons of my youth, the theme of unsated appetite often took the form of a roasted chicken. Henery Hawk, for example, was singularly obsessed with dreams of eating chicken. So much so, the chickenhawk couldn’t distinguish between either Foghorn Leghorn or Barnyard Dawg, which was the chicken, and which was a […]
Broken shells
Are Canada’s municipal councils grappling with a new climate of hostility, from within and without? Such was the claim made in a weekend story in the Globe and Mail. It wasn’t posed as a question— but rather as a reported fact. The evidence presented is a mix of anecdotal— Whitby, Sarnia, St. Stephen, NB and […]
We need you!
How will you know if things can get better? If you don’t participate in decisionmaking? If you ever wish things were better—or different—don’t you have to do something about it? Don’t we all have a role to play? In 2022, fewer than half of eligible voters cast ballots in our municipal election. It is a […]
The Five
No one wants to be critical. The ambition of creating affordable housing in our community is noble. Worthy. Yet there is a vast difference between wanting something and recklessly burning taxpayer dollars to make it happen. Just how hard is evidenced by the eight years of fruitless effort and vast resources expended by the County’s […]
Service creep
What is the County supposed to do? What can it do? And how are these choices/decisions to be sorted? These are some of the existential questions a team of individuals is posing in 2026— nearly 30 years after the municipality was formed. That no one inside Shire Hall thought to ask such questions before now […]
What Covid wrought
Steve Ferguson is a good man, surely guided by good intentions. Somewhere along the way, he came to believe he might be a transformational leader. One who would guide County residents to a bigger, better, brighter future. But Prince Edward County wasn’t changing. Not in the way he and others imagined. It was what it […]
Misplaced priorities
It’s an odd look when politicians appear unaware they are in the business of politics. County council—made up entirely of elected politicians—spent time last week, eyes wide and unblinking, trying to award themselves a 38 per cent pay hike. A few days later, they listened to a consultant explain that Shire Hall can’t afford what […]