In a municipal announcement, led with a screaming all-caps headline like a toddler in a toy store tantrum, the Town of Collingwood published a short statement from Mayor Hamlin about her recent meeting with Premier Doug Ford. Wait, you didn’t know about that meeting? Apparently, few in Collingwood did (and
Continue readingTag: Development & Growth
Scripturient: Council’s First Year, Part 4
The final piece in the series in CollingwoodToday begins with an egregious error: “Collingwood’s Town Council, elected one year ago on Oct. 24, 2022, is celebrating their first year in office as a group.” Council’s first year in office began with their inauguration on Nov. 15, 2022. Before that, they
Continue readingScripturient: Council’s First Year Continued Part 3
The third part of the series in Collingwood Today asked members of council what “surprises they’ve experienced so far in their terms.” As a former councillor, I appreciate how stepping into the role for the first time is a bit of a shock; it takes a while to learn everything,
Continue readingScripturient: The Affordable Housing Myth
Let me start with a few basic, uncomfortable truths about housing. It’s a myth that municipal politicians can, without a coordinated and regional approach that includes private developers and upper-tier levels as well as stakeholders and advocates, solve anything related to housing. And even then, it requires the involvement of
Continue readingScripturient: The Worst Plan for the Terminals
The proposal for a 24-storey waterfront tower with condos, sticking like the proverbial sore thumb above the skyline, well higher than any building permitted by the town’s height bylaw, simply doesn’t fit. And, frankly, it’s big-city ugly. Boxy. Style-less. Drab. Collingwood deserves better. This is our historic waterfront, after all,
Continue readingScripturient: Council’s Abject Failure Over Water
You may have learned from our local media that the new water treatment plant costs have doubled to almost $121 million — suggesting massive increases in your water bill and likely your property taxes are coming. The flaccid media coverage of this outrage didn’t explore the consequences of the increase,
Continue readingScripturient: Collingwood’s Broken Windows
NB. This post was first published on Dec. 9, 2021 If I sometimes seem to complain in a picayune manner, harping on the same signs of scruffiness and neglect that we seem to see more often around town these days, there’s a reason for it. Mostly it’s because I care
Continue readingScripturient: Heritage District Rules Need Repair
A November story in CollingwoodToday about a new homeowner who got caught in the quagmire of our heritage district rules underscores the need for a thorough overhaul of the rules, a review of how the district is managed, and serious improvements in how the town and the heritage committee communicate information about the zone
Continue readingScripturient: Heritage District Rules Need Repair
A recent story in CollingwoodToday about a new homeowner who got caught in the quagmire of our heritage district rules underscores the need for a thorough overhaul of the rules, a review of how the district is managed, and serious improvements in how the town and the heritage committee communicate
Continue readingScripturient: Another Council Facepalm Moment
In a story on CollingwoodToday, this week council again discussed their job-growth-and revenue-killing interim control bylaw (ICBL) that has stopped the town from issuing new home building permits for the next four or more years, until a new water treatment plant is built. Of course, none of the developers or
Continue readingScripturient: The Sad Neglect of Collingwood’s Terminals
Whether you want to restore them or tear them down, you would probably like council to do SOMETHING about the decaying, century-old icon*on our waterfront. Anything, in fact. But as usual, council’s approach to actually doing something has been instead to do defer, delay, hire consultants, bloviate, ignore, pretend it
Continue readingScripturient: More on the Harbourview Park Dump
Speaking to some long-time Collingwood residents, I’ve learned a bit more about the dump that lies under the soil at Harbourview Park and is now proposed as the site of a children’s splash pad. As far as I have been able to determine, this is being done without a proper
Continue readingScripturient: Cwood’s Corroding Lampposts
First Street was so attractive when it was first rebuilt, about 15 years ago: all new and shiny infrastructure. But since then, it has been basically neglected and the inevitable effects of snow, moisture, salt, sand, and pollution have played their role in corroding the once-proud, beautiful lampposts that line
Continue readingScripturient: They’re Paving Paradise to Put Up a Parking Lot
By now you’re aware that our council has approved a plan to destroy a large open, public space in Harbourview Park, and replace healthy grass and trees with an asphalt parking lot so that people will drive instead of bicycling or walking to use the $1.55 million splash pad that
Continue readingScripturient: Saunderson’s Job-Killing ICBL Continued
James Madison, one of the US’s Founding Fathers said that a government “…without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a tragedy or a farce, or perhaps both.” Sure reads like someone describing our own council and their refusal to listen to the public
Continue readingScripturient: Saunderson’s Epic Blunder
A blunder of epic proportions? A sobering display of supreme incompetence and ineptitude? A total failure of communications, direction, and leadership? An underhanded excuse to hand our municipal water services over to a private corporation without public consultation? A rudderless municipal government fumbling from one crisis to the next with
Continue readingScripturient: Saunderson’s Role in Blocking the Hospital Redevelopment
During the previous council’s four years (2014-18), I documented the aggressive efforts to stall the local hospital’s desperately-needed redevelopment by a group of those on council (aka The Block*). Every other municipality in the region enthusiastically supported the hospital’s plan; only this group on Collingwood council put up roadblocks. And
Continue readingScripturient: Where is Collingwood’s Pandemic Response?
I admit I am stumped. I have been looking online to find something that tells me what Collingwood council has done in response to the COVID-19 pandemic over the past year. I’m looking for real, concrete, measurable steps, things that benefit our community; things that residents and businesses can point
Continue readingScripturient: What would $9 Million Buy Our Town?
Back a few years ago, the 2010-14 council led by Mayor Cooper approved building for the community several important structures and buying for public ownership several properties, any of which — indeed, several of which — could have been built for less than the $9 million cost we taxpayers are
Continue readingScripturient: Small town rules
In their book, Small Town Rules (Pearson Education Inc., USA, 2012), authors Barry Moltz and Becky McCray explain seven rules for businesses that use the model of a small town to offer advice on growing and maintaining a business n the “connected economy.” And while most of their rules are
Continue reading