Adrift
You are wrong, said Mayor Steve Ferguson. Occasionally shouting. Always indignant. He spent much of the past year telling Wellington residents, nervous waterworks customers, and this newspaper that we were wrong. Mayor Ferguson went so far as to take out a full-page ad to explain the various ways we were wrong. Lately, however, Mayor Ferguson’s […]
Flushed away
When the book is written on the largest infrastructure expansion ever taken on in the County, last week’s audit committee meeting will surely mark the chapter where the plot fell apart. Fully and completely. The committee learned last week that there is no basis to believe thousands of homes will be built here or that […]
No. Thank you.
Give it back. Should the province approve an $18.3 million grant for County waterworks expected this month, I pray, as a water customer, Council says: No, thank you. It is not as though the water utility couldn’t use the money—it can—but rather that Shire Hall is likely to hold up this pittance as a reason— […]
Say anything
The race is on. The clock is ticking. Shire Hall can feel opposition mounting to massive waterworks spending across Prince Edward County. Meanwhile, their explanations don’t add up. The marketing spin is a thin fabric of half-truths, breadcrumbs leading nowhere, and the slipperiest of red herrings. The argument that developers were paying for any it […]
Running
There is that moment when Wile E. Coyote pursues the Roadrunner through a cloud of dust, emerging on the other side to find himself beyond the cliff’s edge. Suspended momentarily in mid-air, Mr. Coyote looks forlornly to the camera and then holds up a sign that reads: HELP! Only when Mr. Coyote recognizes his fate […]
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 […]
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 […]
Terminal failure
It is hard to see how Mayor Ferguson and a handful of council members could have managed things worse—how they twisted a moderately challenging issue into a pure fiasco. We tend not to see public inquiries in local politics, but if municipal leadership ever warranted third-party scrutiny, it is around the Picton Terminals’ settlement. There […]