The Diary volume Thirteen September 1 2002 to September 30 2002

September 2002
September 29th 2002
A big bundle this week: Local MPP acquires the "death lady", more about the boundary change discussions ( a view from the inside)A huge report from theschool board for a huge amount of money based on shaky premises.

The big news this week for all political punditsproduced rage, mirth, amazement, accusations of political stupidity,pledges from voters never to vote for Doug Galt again and more interestinglya big look into the box of political skeletons! What brought all thison? The press release from the Provincial MPP's office announcing thathe had a new Executive Assistant. As we should all know the local MPP,demonstrating the "peter principle" has been placed in the Cabinet by thenew Premier. As a Minister without Portfolio (does that mean he has no clothes just like the famous Emperor?) and the Caucus Whip, he needed a larger staff. His faithful Tonto, Al (the hatchet) Hoffman, expected to get the job and the attendent raise. But what he forgot was that there wasa faithful party hack sniffing around for a job.
    Rewind seven years; the County of Northumberland was looking for a new CAO. Amongst the short list was a middleaged,but still good looking blonde? - Lynda Mitchell - with a well stacked frame. Swinging the top half of her ample assets she captivated the members of the hiring committee, never mind that her previous experience was as a political aide to Elsie Wayne (a previous Mayor of a large EastCoast municipality, the name of which escapes me and now one of the fewsitting Tory MPs in Ottawa) and being the CAO of a seven employee hick townin the Muskokas; she was subsequently hired. Arriving with a man in tow,a Mr Reynolds - boyfriend at the time now her husband, who had a dubioushistory of his own. But his biggest assets were his friends in Queen'sPark who had been doling out contracts for various endeavours (amalgamationof Kingston Twp for one). She and he (acting as a newly hired HR consultantto the County) proceeded to dismantle the place. Centralising control shewent through three Treasurers and god knows how many managers, suffice to say there are none of the inherited managers working now. These machinations cost the County taxpayers (us) much money, grief and settled lawsuits, the cost of which is still the subject of many unanswered Freedom of Informationrequests submitted by the mainstream press.
    So fast forwarding to this week; rampant speculant abounded amongst the chattering classes about why such  a politically astute? person as Doug Galt would do such a silly thing. Only one answer quickly came to the top - the Ernie Eves connection. Ernie Eves, the Premier of Ontario, has a reputation for being a 'swordsman' and 'ladykiller', and one of the heavy stories that accompanied Lynda Mitchell's arrival was the rumour and allegation that she and Ernie had been 'horizontal mambo' partners at some time in the past. In fact although she never revealed the personal side of her relationship it was a fact that in the early days of her administration faxes ( I personally saw one) and calls were routed through a large pipeline to Ernie's Queen's Park offices, he was definitely a mentor. Remember this was in the heady days of the Tory revolution and all good tories were sticking together to the detriment of the rest of society. So with the sestories so quickly recalled by political pundits and observers, this week, they all concluded Doug Galt had no choice, one of 'Ernie's babes' needed a job so she gets one! Doug being the loyal footsoldier, sycophant or lapdog did what he was told, or so it is alleged by the observers. The other thing, please correct me if I am wrong on this. is that since he never worked with this woman, he left the County before she came in, I guess he really never knew what she was like and perhaps admired the way she revolutionised the County administration (it was heady revolutionary times) he thought she might be OK.
Want to have a trip to El Salvador and support a local enterprise at the same time? Sign up for sign up now for the trip to El Salvador the Horizon's of Friendship's travel tour. All the details are here . For those whodon't want to click on this link here's the skinny. 10 days in El Salvador touring the 'real country' $2500 covers everything including air port taxes and translation services. Quoting the writer on the site, "Don’t expect to go on accompanied “impromtu” shopping excursions or trips tolocal nightclubs–El Salvador is an extremely violent country with a veryhigh level of crime–we will travel together at all times and with peoplewho know the territory well. Finally, you will see a lot of poverty–someof which you may find disturbing. However, you will find the people of ElSalvador genuinely warm and welcoming and most happy that your are visitingin their country." for more details contact HOF by emailat info@horizons.ca  and express yourinterest or call toll free at 1-888-729-9928.

$100,000 dollars landed on the public's doorstep with a big thud this week. The Long term Accomodation Plan written for the local School Board (news release here, the 202 page report report here in PDF form) was presented to the public in a press conference. Nobody is embracing this thing yet and it is being shuffled off to the stafffor dissection and a report. From my perspective the whole exercise isnauseating because it is based on the premise that the present funding formulais written in stone. How can we have a study that lays out what we aregoing to do with our schools up to the year 2016 based on a political stance,instead of educational needs?
    The major thrust of the report respects the fact that school enrolment is going down. Quoting a reviewer of David Foot's book, "Boom, Bust and Echo"; J Linton of TCI Management ConsultantsLtd,quote a passage from the book: "In the late nineties, the baby busterswill replace boomers as producers of children. Consequently, the birthrate will fall and a smaller percentage of taxpayers will have childrenin public schools. There will thus be tremendous pressure on identifyingnew and innovative ways of providing schooling rather than simply buildingnew facilities." The emphasis should be on the latter. In recommendingthat schools be closed, the rationale (in my opinion), is based on two things;both wrong: firstly we have too many small schools and secondly we can getgrants to build new schools. This report proposes closing mainly small elementaryschools and building "teaching factories" Some of the schools on the closure list aren't even 45 years old yet!  To close down schools and thenbuild new ones is a wasteful exercise and in some cases silly on the surface.In Cobourg we have two High Schools, both underenrolled. One over a hundredyears old but modernised and one built in the 60s. It is proposed to build a new one and then close both of these. Where will they build? The schoolboard has been sitting on a patch of land since the 70's in a subdivision on the west side of town. Putting a 1000 pupil High School in the middle of a subdivision that has grown considerably and now has no access roads to it is ludicrous and unsafe. Bus traffic alone will drive the residents'of Westwood nuts. This land has been overtaken by circumstance and this is only one example of the facts getting in the way of dreams. More to come; the public meeting in Cobourg to discuss the report is on October7th at the East High School.
Inside the Boundary discussions. This week I participated in the boundary discussions with reoresentatives of all the major political parties. Chaired by the sitting member. Paul Macklin MP, we quickly got down to basics: the County is too small to have its own member and needs to add population to keep the onewe have. Debate quickly got down to two options for getting the extra people,from the east or the west side of the County. The Municipality of Clarington(west) is composed of towns and areas that have more affinity and socio-economicconnections with Northumberland County than the east. Taking Bowmanvilleand land to the east to the County boundary will give us the added 30,000people, we need to be around 107,000 to be ideal. Taking all of Quinte West the municipality to the east of Northumberland will put us over the top by11,000 so if one wants to go east one has to take part of QW and that meansthe area of Trenton (which is in the riding already) but Trenton is covetedby their other neightbour Prince Edward County. So with the NDP, whose bestvotes come from the west and the Alliance whose best votes come from theeast forming bookends around the Liberals idea of leaving things the waythey are the situation has the potential to be a mess. However we did all agree that the County should not be split and if the Boundary Commissionerswant to give us people from whatever side of the County so that the Countyremains intact that would be a pretty good ending.
Just in. a letter from the NorthumberlandLabour Council to its afiliates and supporters
Staff at Cobourg Daily Star and Port Hope Evening Guide have a strike deadlineof Thursday, October 3, 2002. The staff are members of CWA Local 30248.Theirissues:
the employer wants to
In the event of a strike, they are askingus to support them by cancelling our subscriptions and advertising and/orcalling Mike Walsh at 905-372-0131 about our concerns.
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September 22 2002
Somebody with a lot of time on their hands has been manipulating the what a poser local newspaper polling. Last week the poll (shown as a screenshoot to the left), which normally has about less than ten responses on any topic at any time, asked the question, "Would a single police station  on Highway 2 make sense?" The results are displayed here. Look at the number of answers to the posed option, "keep the police forces independent?"









September 15th 2002
A large belly laugh led into guffaws when checking out the Cobourg Council agenda for material. One item; the purchase of a street sweeper, took me back a decade and a half. When deciding to run for Cobourg Council in 1993 and again in 1995 the big issuefor me was the fact that the Town was paying piles of money to a contractor to sweep the streets. I decided that it would be a good issue torun on, replace the contractor and save money. In the days of rampantexpansion of public services (eighties and nineties) it should havesold but the prevailing opinion was "that's the work of the privatesector (cost be damned) government isn't going to get into that!" Evenafter nine years of council work, by me, the financial argument of savingmoney could not overcome the ideological argument of separating the marketand the state. So when I read that the staff were recommending to Councillast week that the position be reversed tears came to my eyes, both inmirth and pity. Mirth because finally someone had seen the light (eventhough for all of those years Councilor Williams had been opposed to theidea and now he introduces it as though it had never been discussed before) and in pity for the thousands of dollars wasted by stupid politicians(Councilor Williams et al) who had not seen the light until now.

This must be the week for laughsproduced by current affairs. The proponents of the Walmart site (RCCL)who still own 24 acres of untouched land) are talking about undertaking astudy to see what the public want on that land. Gee folks I thought we haddone a study, it's called the Official Plan. The sheer gall of the situation now developing,  Royal Cobourg doesn't like the Official Plan and now it will set up a planning process of its own and then show Council whatthe people want. I guess buying the councilors every election time isn'tenough now they want to takeover the planning process!!  Well it shouldbe cheaper than paying the planners we have, two in house and one consultant in Toronto. Just hand the whole shebang over to Chris Wongand he will maintain the rule of the current Mayor, who some peoplebelieve really does want to be remembered as the guy who convertedCobourg into "retail heaven" with a 'regional shopping centre' (whateverthat means?) and a pitiful downtown.

This is one one for all the websurfers out there, a message from one of the readers:If you search the web for  "Burd Report" + Williams + Council  you will see you have namesakes (sort of) in Watford.
Most interesting, something must be in the names to produce such stuff.
This iscertainly the week for announcements about public participation. Another land speculator and foreign developer (from Belleville - 60 kms east of Cobourg) a Mr Rollins, the owner of an upscale retirement homesituated in the secondmost historic building in Cobourg - the oldVictoria College on University Ave is vic college cobourg proposing that he might seek the public's opinion when building his second phase. He wishes to build "condos for wrinklies"  on the vast acreage of land next to the building. The reason for the underdevelopment of this land is very simple. Council has watched this fine building change hands amongst a myriad of numbered companies over the past few years and know that the only lever they have on its preservation is the Heritage easement (a Provincial designation that restricts the owner's property rights). So the building and theland has not been severed into development parcels. A few months agothe developer asked for a severance so that he could add an additionto the back of the building. Council said that until he fixed the cupola on the top of the building, it had become a home the pidgeons and someof the louvres were missing, he couldn't have one. So this week afterabandoning plans for an addition on the back he came back and asked for permission to build on the east side and he also explained "that 90% of the cupola work is completed". I guess his idea of fixing is to make the rest of the cupola blend in with the rest of the building's style: leaky and missing eavestroughing, bad or absent paint jobs and other signs of bad exterior maintenance, never mind he promisesto clean up the pidgeon poop inside the cupola so we should be satisfied with his patch job. But back to the promised 'focus groups'. This is certainly the modern trendbeing advocated by consultants to developers. The theory is simple, getthe public bellyaching over before the development is too far along thatbad press would cost money. Besides if the developer can come into Council with a glossy book outlining public opinion about the project it looks good and will persuade Council that the only people left to complain about the development are the real 'bitchers and complainer' and who caresabout them, "you can never satisfy those people!"
Without being partisan letme share with you the experience of a leadership campaign. As a member of an active political party I am now  encountering the thrill of the campaign - unsolicited email and phone calls. Not that it is intrusivejust interesting, hey I must be a somebody after all these years!! Peoplewant to ring me up and talk to me. I don't think I'll be able to handleall this flattery - if you want some just join a political party the leadership races will catch up with you sooner or later. By the way here is the latest, and first newsletter from the guy I am supporting here. In order to be fair any other newsletter fromany of the other candidates will be referenced - just send them to meand I'll put them up, but only the first one!!
Let's not draw any conclusions herebut working this weekend I have come across 7 people (that's a lot!) whohave had to get me to unlock their cars (one person even left their spare keys next to the real set when the door was locked). Six of them were females.

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end of section
September 8th 2002

Another week and it's time for another edition, the edition below, Sept 1, did not go out because it was deemed too short. I believe that if something is going toinvade your cyberspace it should be heavy enough to make a clunk,maybe this week and last will do that!
    Keith Oliver (of Walmart and OMB fame) has been waging a war of words that have been falling on deaf ears. His last (but not his latest) effort was an attempt to rebut something that happened the last time he appeared before Council. This was two weeks ago when he implored Council to implement a two year planning freeze on development in the north end of Town. "Use Walmart's impact to study the effect on the rest of the commercial base in the Town." During that address he suggested, once again, that because the latest market study used to justify the new commercial enterprises had never been fully accepted by all or even been peer-reviewed, that is was unwise to use it as a base for further market studies, as they plan to do. And, he suggested that perhaps a guy by the name of Kircher do the job. Well at the name of Kircher the Mayor jumped into remind all and sundry that this was the guy that Zellers uses in their market studies and therefore must be suspect. At that point the delegation before Council degenerated into a 'he said, she said' affair becauseKeith Oliver fired back and said that was an unfair characterisation andbesides when some people had the temerity to suggest that when the Town hired Malone Givens and Parsons to do their suspect study the Mayor andCouncil rigidly defended its independence even though the majority of theirwork came from Walmart affiliations. So feeling that the Mayor had abusedhis position of office for political purposes [what else is itto be used for Ed?} he wrote letters to Council and the local mediaThe letter to the Northumberland News is reproduced below:

Ben 
How does the label "the Mayor of Wal-Mart" grab you? 
-------------------- 
The Northumberland News 
Sept 4, 2002 Cobourg, Ont 

Att: Letters to the Editor 

In your article "New retail storeswon't get cold shoulder: Mayor" (Sept 4)I am referred to as a "long-time big-box opponent". The fact isI could care less about big-box stores in Cobourg. What I am is a "long-time Official Plan proponent".Official Plans and the studies they mandate are important because theyoffer the only means by which towns such as Cobourg an control growth. There is good growth and there is badgrowth. The studies should be scrupulouslyobjective, thorough, and all questions they raise should be answered. My concern about the PricewaterhouseCoopers market study which will accessthe impact of 53,000 square feet ofnew commercial development opposite Wal-Mart, on existing businesses and the downtown, is that it willrely on questionable data collected by Malone Givens Parsons in 2000. After reviewing this study, and in asworn and detailed 13 page affidavit,Herman Kircher, an expert market analyst recognized by the OMB, concludes that "the MGP report is seriously deficient due to the lack of appropriate consumer research". To compound matters the MGP 2000 study fundamentally contradicts the conclusions arrived at in a 1998 study by market analyst Barry Lyon, which was carried out and paid for independently by the town. The differences between the two studies and the data collecting methods they used has never been resolved. Mayor Delanty talks about carrying out studies with "due diligence", yet rejects and dismisses any reasonable criticism of the same studies out of hand. The Mayor then resorts to playing the game of "shoot the messenger" byaccusing the source of the criticism, Mr Kircher, of bias, and in effect questioning his professional integrity. Many unresolved reasonablequestions exist about the MGP 2000 study including the fact that upon measuring five retail/service businesson King Street, it was found thatMGP 2000 reported an average of only half the active retail space. If Mayor Delanty continues to be the cheer leaderfor unrelenting and untested development for Cobourg, future generations may look back at the result andremember him, not as the Mayor of Cobourg,but as the Mayor of Wal-Mart. 
Keith Oliver 
327 Walton Street 
Cobourg, ON K9A-3X1 
905-377-0107

Two political dinosaurs clashed this week. The massive bull elephants of Cobourg politics: Deputy Mayor Bob Spooner and Councilor (I really should be mayor) Lloyd Williams) revealed in a public butting of egosthat they don't much like each other and are using parliamentarylanguage and the local press to say so.
    The reason for this spat is the proposal by Mr Williams to put parking meters around the Beach area on all the surrounding streets. (For more on this, including my opinion, read below). Mr Spooner brandishing a letter from a couple who live in Baltimore (not in the town - five miles out - for our foreign readers) he vowed that Cobourgers would not be paying because Council has decided they shouldn't. Mr Williams seeing this public statement as completely unfounded accused the Deputy Mayor of 'grandstanding' and said he should mind his own business! Stay tuned for more on this the clash of egos.

Back to Keith Oliver, he has asked me to publicise an initiative he is pushing read all about it here
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September the !st, the day before Labour Day
One day to go before we resume thepace of living as we know it - the summer's over - at the beginning of the 21st century. Anyone notice that it bears a striking resemblance to the beginning of the 20th century: work week at least 50- 60 hours, wages down compared to prices, elites appearing tohave all the power, conglomerates getting bigger each day and thesense of joe blow's powerlessness growing larger all the time. Itis as though the last hundred year's have not really been around asfar as social development  a point to think about as we celebrate Labour Day!

In a meanspirited and not very well thought out move. Cobourg Council is discussing theinstallation of parking meters on the streets that surround themajor recreational facility we own - the beach! in response to a comment made by the Deputy Mayor that it is costing the ParksDepartment more money than budgeted to keep the beach clean, because some rude and sloppy louts (ooops patrons) are leaving behind thedetritus of modern beach front recreation (trash!) and it has to becleaned up and maybe the patrons should pay for it Councilor LloydWilliams, ever eager to show who's the boss jumped in and proposed a plan to blanket the area with parking meters.
    Two things come to mind why should the Town improve and offer its facilities to the general public and then bellyache because the general public has the effrontery to make a mess (you're either in the hospitality business or you're not), and two if the cost of cleaning the beach hasto come out of the visitors pockets why aren't the citizens ofCobourg protected from this clean up fee? And, is the installationof parking meters the best way to tax visitors for leaving a mess?
     The reason I call this move meanspirited is because it will penalize and harass the very type of visitor that Cobourg needs on its beach - the family. I just don't get it, we have spent a year or more in public debate about free parking in the downtown as a means of attracting traffic and now we are going in the opposite direction at the beach just because there are some slobs amongst us. If we follow that kind of logic we should ban all people from the beach and then the Council can be quite happy in the best of both worlds - a clean beach and money in our pocket, because there are no people to mess it up!
     Of course as with every thing Councilor William's touches there are unintended consequences, witness his handling of the "white rose" (where he proposed that a major artwork be installed in front of Victoria Hall without talking to the real powermongers of the establishment, who didn't like his idea) where he had to back down because they did not like it. The people who will be most affected by his silly suggestion that parking meters be installed, without giving Cobourg residentsfree passes, will be the members of the Cobourg Bowling Club (a mostinfluential group of people, mainly older adults who have plentyof time on their hands to mount a messy opposition campaign). This is definitely an idea that needs more work.

In the search for Riding Boundary changes, there is considerable work going on behind the scenes in at least one local political party. What we doknow is that the Election Commission stresses its own independence and that the idea that an MP's opinion is any weightier than a citizen's opinion  won't fly. That means that any proposed changes  should be on record by October 12th. Also it is becoming obvious, by the support of this plan that the Progressive Conservatives are willing toput electoral politics before the very idea of keeping Northumberland County together as a cohesive social unit. They just see this an opportunity to get of the people who don't vote for them anyway. So good riddance west northumberland goes the party line, we can get elected in the rural area.

It is interesting to note that there is a bright spot of planning initiative amongst the rush to ignore the Official Plan in the traditional sense. An application is before Council now to use the building that was formerly used as the Union Gas Company, on Division St,  as an office, as a car dealership in the front and still have the gas company operations work from the back of the building. A very good example of both mixed use and higher density.

In a letter published in the Cobourg Daily Star the wee trustee takes the Cobourg Council to task for not putting a crossing guard on the lights at Division St. and University, to protect the children going to school at Gummow, who live in the west side of town, from idiot drivers ata very busy intersection. Funny, this was a point of concern raised by the parents of the Gillbard children and this concern was duly noted to be addressed by the authorities in the future but before the start of the school term. Now if all he is doing is writing a letter and lobbying councilors it is a little late and of not much consequence to those looking out for children's safety not the allocation ofblame.
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