UPDATED…
… and, it appears, it only took six months into this new term of council…
Exhibit No. 1: At this moment (about 1:30 in the afternoon on Monday), two guys in a cherry-picker are washing down the new library building with a powerwasher and a broom. Really? Are we trying to preserve the building’s just-moved-in look? By the way, photos on my Twitter feed…
Update: Well, well, it seems scrubbing the building to make it nice and shiny was actually part of the construction contract – so it’s not costing taxpayers anything. As a councillor noted to me tonight, it would look goofy if they were doing it in the rain…
My response to that is it was usually raining when the parks & rec staff were watering the flower baskets in the downtown last summer…
Exhibit No. 2: Town council is considering at its meeting tonight a motion to name the trail on top of the berm — otherwise known as Mount Doom — after the town’s former leisure services director Peter Dunbar.
Really? Naming a trail after a former employee, who was basically doing the job we paid him to do?
Nothing against Dunner, but council needs to give that one a re-think; I recommend deferring the motion for some sober second-thought, unless council really wants to look like a bunch of sycophantic sheep…
Updated: As noted above, council opted to defer this decision until they got some clarification on the town’s policy for naming things like roads and trails. Councillor Ian Chadwick questioned whether the person in question needed to be deceased in order for something to be named after him; however, that’s evidently not a consideration under the naming policy as the town named a road after former mayor Ron Emo last year – and unless something happened on the weekend, he briefly sat down with the Hot Stove crew at the Huron Club on Friday and appeared to be very much alive…
Again, my issue with the name has nothing to do with Dunner (though some people are trying to make an issue of that in the comment section). My issue is with naming something after someone who was following the policy as handed down by council. Yes, Dunbar worked hard to establish a trail system in Collingwood, but successive councils also enabled that work by approving policy…
Further Updates: Another viewpoint which deserves to be aired, one which I can semi-agree with: If you have someone of “star quality” — and there’s no doubt Dunbar was a star when it came to trail development, as he’s been recognized provincially and, I believe, nationally — there’s nothing wrong with recognizing him or her.
Which is fine. But again — this is nothing to do with Dunbar, and I’m trying very hard to keep his name out of my opinion; some of the stuff being raised as to his job performance is completely extraneous to the conversation. This is about policy and process, and whether both were appropriately followed…
