Legislating civility
Asimmering unease is wafting across the shire. An edginess in the discourse. A restlessness fuelled by a sense that the elected council is talking down to residents—a growing feeling that Shire Hall has stopped listening or no longer cares what folks outside its walls think. The malaise, so far, has mostly taken the form of […]
Who says?
Who says Prince Edward County’s population is growing? Who says the population is doubling in the foreseeable future? Who says Wellington is growing seven times its current size to 14,500 people and Picton by six times to 32,600? If it sounds incredible to you—as in, not credible at all—it should. The County’s population has remained […]
Confused
An audit committee is meant to serve as a protective layer. Ideally, it is a stoic, ever-watchful guardian over an organization’s finances. It is supposed to be the early warning detector that signals when the ship strays off course. Lists to one side. Or is heading toward an iceberg. The audit committee is there to […]
Unwelcome advice
AMilford man has devised a better way to look at Shire Hall spending. It is objectively better because his method tracks Shire Hall’s spending over time, simplifies spending into logical spending buckets and compares actual performance year over year. It is easy to read and understand. But this isn’t how Shire Hall does things. It […]
No mandate
We did not sign up for this. Council did not earn a mandate to drain the resources of Prince Edward County. Forever. It has no popular basis for piling on forever costs and debt onto residents. It did not advise voters of its plan to foreclose funding options for a generation or longer. It didn’t […]
Lawyer up
County Council needs a lawyer. That was the advice suggested last week by a reader steeped in the risks and hazards of governance. The files are too big. Too complex. Too fraught with risk for Council simply to “trust” staff. Trust in staff is the crutch municipal council members lean on as they wade through […]
Quicksand
The ground keeps shifting. The rules keep changing. The assumptions crumble under the lightest scrutiny. The explanations are incoherent. The only thing that doesn’t change is that existing waterworks customers in Prince Edward County are on the hook for a rapidly rising bill they cannot possibly pay. Yet, Shire Hall and Council have decided a […]
Something happened here
Something happened here,” said Father George Okoye from his pulpit on Friday morning. Something about his observation seemed to give the priest pause. Up to that point, it had been a traditional and mostly predictable Catholic funeral service, overlaying the Gospel reading onto the life of the departed. Stand. Sit. Stand. Kneel. Sit. Stand. But […]
Pot o’ gold
The scale of the ambition is breathtaking. Roads. Doctors. Waterworks. Housing. Each was once primarily the responsibility of the province. Rural municipalities were expected to help. But it was the province that drove investment and re-investment. The province had the skills, the experience, and the financing capacity to do these things. The province set the […]
Touched
Over the course of two road trips this spring, I was fortunate to have travelled the breadth of the continental United States. Coast to coast. Rhode Island in April and across the great expanse of the plains to Seattle last week. It truly is a magnificent, glorious, and, at times, a sorrily decadent place. (Travelling […]