Cornwall Ontario – Democracy dies when people don’t tend to it. That means voting. It means being active more than just at elections. It means becoming aware to some degree of what the monkeys at City Hall get up to. I mean we have a city clerk that can’t even get candidate contact information correct over one month since the gates opened.
In this town they get up to quite a bit. We have had runaway tax increases which will only get worse. We have a labour issue due to multiple terms of essentially letting the fox in the henhouse.
I can’t imagine many other municipalities having the Current/former President of the Labour Council as a City Councilor (while espousing that raising taxes is a good thing!) like we have in Elaine MacDonald. The Labour block is a strong one in Cornwall, but not strong enough to rule the day if more people simply decided that they’d had enough of bad service and high taxes.
It’s all interconnected. It goes to the Chamber who pooped all over the Charter during the last election and instead of coming up with a creative solution (I know we’re talking Lezlie Strasser and Mike Metcalfe) have decided to abandon debate for council candidates and have a schmoozer instead and just a mayor’s debate while for some odd reason kissing Cogeco’s posterior when there is more cord cutting than ever and Cogeco is not supposed to be competing with Commercial media. That the chamber of all entities perpetuates that is so odd. All media should be treated equally for such an event.
Many of us call it the clique, but it’s just one good ol boy or gal rubbin’ the others hind end and if you’re not on the inside then you’re on the out. That’s fine for private business, but when it’s on the public’s dime quite another.
It’s even worse in the media where ol Hugo from the Freeholder appears to have given City Hall a free pass on an issue that most likely would make huge news in other cities. If a Post Media paper won’t report news of that magnitude Democracy is not doing very well. The scary part just might be the reasons why ol Hugo would duck such a story.
We have 31 individuals running for council. There probably aren’t enough worthy to elect 10. That’s scary. Looking over nomination papers we see the same people signing sheets for the same people. We have the kids of local big shots who couldn’t get gigs in the private world. We have kids of city managers. We have people who have never held a real job in their lives other than those paid for by we the taxpayers and yet these monkeys want to run a near $200M per year corporation.
Do we even know why some of these folks are running and what they represent? Or who?
Is it any wonder that Maureen Adams gets away with what she and other city managers do? There simply is no backstop. No device for the public to take action. Which means higher taxes. And more comments from developers that Cornwall
Wasn’t even in the game.
And this election sadly is in the bag. The bad guys are going to win this one no matter what. It’s also why you’re seeing so little coverage by media locally and so little chatter about this election.
As for the mayor’s slot it’s kind of ironic that David Murphy has been burned by ol Les who essentially has given the election to Flipper. Of course whether Murphy or Clement won both are in the bag of the “clique” so expect more NAV CAN action and your tax dollars heading to that facility, as well as other strange and non-delightful uses of the public purse. Maybe we’ll hire ten more full time firefighters? Or build a second art centre to embrace Cornwall historical francophone culture? After all. It’s only your money. Right?
It’s a dark and sad time that will only lead to more good people leaving Cornwall for greener less corrupt pastures. This week I know of two families that have left which amount to a total of four adults and nearly ten children. Can Cornwall really afford to see young families leave? Can you blame them?
The only thing that will change this is YOU. That’s right. If you’re reading this editorial then you probably have digested some of this. But honestly YOU have to take action and work to make sure that during the next four years this scary group of monkeys are kept accountable and exposed each and every decision.
And you need to focus on making sure that in 2022 Cornwall becomes Brampton 2.0.
It’s all up to you. It really is.
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