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 […]
Eroding trust
It didn’t happen. When the Picton councillor asked, a couple of weeks ago, why the Manager of Planning hadn’t reached out to the owner of the roads in Wellington on the Lake about sharing access with another developer to the east, the answer was, “We asked. He told us to go fly a kite.” Councillors […]
Ask questions
It’s the job. The purpose of a member of council is to ask questions. And keep asking questions until you get satisfactory answers. It’s the primary function of any governing body. But who needs to ask questions when you have faith? For some, it is ‘insulting’ to ask questions, to challenge assumptions, and to ensure […]
Dividing line
A road runs along the eastern edge of Wellington on the Lake. This street, Aletha (not Athena, not Aleta, not Eurethra) Drive, is owned by the company that developed the residential neighbourhood. Another developer is looking to build homes on the vacant land to the east. This prospective developer is not permitted to use this […]
Conversations
After years of impulsive measures that served to tell the visiting public they weren’t welcome in Prince Edward County, the message may be changing. The most onerous rules and ham-fisted regulations are slowly—too slowly—being unwound and softened. While not yet able to utter a full-throated embrace of the tourism economy, Council seems less inclined 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 […]