Use once. Discard.
Is recycling working? Is it doing what we think it does? We have three main streams of residential waste in the County—garbage, recycling and compost. Two different trucks circulating along every lonely road in the County each week, ensuring one doesn’t get mixed up with the other. But what happens to all that recycling material? […]
Carbon tax
Whatever Canada is doing, we shall do that too,” said no nation ever. Join me in this quick exercise. Let’s check off the boxes about the carbon tax proposed by Justin Trudeau’s government. Will it make a meaningful difference in global emissions of CO2? No. Will it even take us a measurable distance toward meeting […]
Reasonable
Congratulations Steve Ferguson. We’ve been waiting for you. There is much to do, so let’s get started. Among your first calls, may we suggest you ring up Mitch Panciuk. Arrange for lunch. This week. Before Shire Hall staff jam up your schedule. Find the time to sit down over some pasta and salad, perhaps a […]
Mayor
To view Gary Mooney’s All Candidate’s Survey, please click here. Leadership is the central issue in this race for mayor. After expelling its County manager early on, council mostly floated aimlessly through the remainder of the term. What began as an illconsidered putsch of Shire Hall’s leading reformer, devolved into a sad, unfocused, undisciplined and […]
Workable
The most salient bit came four hours into the council committee meeting called to consider regulating shortterm accommodations (STAs) in Prince Edward County. After 23 deputations, mostly against the proposed rules—interspersed with voices worried about how vacation rentals were depleting housing stock and the impact on affordability—it was the County’s public works chief who provided […]
Get on with it
Correction: The print version of this comment said existing STAs would be grandfathered, meaning they would be exempt from the rules under the proposed regulations. This is incorrect. While new zoning rules will be grandfathered for existing STAs, most new licensing and property standards regulations governing occupancy levels, operational aspects and parking and such will apply to both existing and new STAs. It seems Shire […]
Time to act
The County’s proposed regulations presentation and supporting documents can be found here. There are times when winning just isn’t among the available options. Only degrees of losing. On such occasions, I will admit some sympathy for municipal folks when they stray from Shire Hall. Last week the County’s planning manager, Paul Walsh, unveiled preliminary plans […]
Rules
The trick was to discourage speculators without inflicting undue pain upon the folks renting out a room or two as a means of eking out a living in Prince Edward County. Short-term accommodations (STAs) have blossomed with the emergence of sharing services including Airbnb, VRBO and others. It’s a phenomenon that isn’t unique to the […]
Cornerstone
The Prince Edward Learning Centre works to equip individuals with literacy, numeracy and other academic and job-seeking skills in our community. A quarter of the folks who participate in the Learning Centre’s Aspire program aren’t certain where they will sleep each night. More than half live in conditions few of us would consider adequate or […]
New energy
It used to be a dark time of year. Visitors mostly stopped coming after Remembrance Day. By now many residents had also fled or were making plans for a winter in the sun of Florida, Portugal or elsewhere. Others simply retired indoors to venture out again in the spring. Yet, late fall in the County […]