Cornwall Ontario – When I ran for Mayor of Cornwall in 2014 I was really clear about our number one issue, taxes.
I had a clear plan that would cut taxes by 5%. Now knowing the lay of the land; my false police charges, still not held accountable for by a corrupt police chief, crown office, and police board (imagine running for mayor with a peace bond and conditions in place and threat of jail hovering over you) clearly hostile local media, some of which not only didn’t cover my campaign, but lied about it like Todd Lihou did, or refused our campaign ads.
No, my campaign in 2014 was about seeing the very corrupt Bob Kilger and many of his councilors removed from office of which I would say that I was very successful at doing contrary to what Hugo Rodrigues has spouted. (Kilger and 5 councilors failed to get re elected ) In fact we had to slow the campaign down due to possible vote splitting. Kilger lost by about 1200 votes and I pulled in nearly 1000.
In 2014 we had a slate of new shiny faces. New sometimes is good. Inexperienced and not too smart isn’t. A Carilyne Hebert or Justin Towndale in council has hurt this community. Brock Frost, who still probably could get elected and oddly enough in his short term actually performed better than the dismal council including Mayor Leslie O’Shaugnessy should probably be in jail rather than be running a municipality.
Gerry Benson and friends created CAG which supposedly was about cutting taxes while he came to council asking for tax dollars to create his vanity legacy University. How did that work out after two rounds of cash from the city Gerry?
So what we’ve seen essentially are increases each year culminating with this years record spike of nearly 5% only achieved by borrowing cash for a project instead of paying for it this year. That’s not good management. Those are ground for dismissal of CAO Maureen Adams and others.
And that’s the problem in Cornwall. Bad management. In a perfect world Council holds management accountable and vice versa. In Cornwall’s case it’s been a disaster. Too many have too much dirt on each other to hold anyone accountable.
For example the person that mops the floors at City Hall can’t run for council yet Elaine MacDonald while President of the Labour Council could. Clearly the impact of organized labour on the city government has been a chief thrust in the runaway taxes.
All one has to do is look where the biggest increases have come; from Emergency Services. Instead of some part time firefighters or reviewing of how services are doled out we’ve simply kept upping the budgets to the point where our public works have suffered and our piggy banks and reserves are empty.
And as scary as this budget is, it’s going to get a lot worse, especially when interest rates go up.
No, this council has left the city in worse condition four years later while acting like a thin skinned bunch of ninnies who clearly couldn’t work together and have allowed management, under CAO Maureen Adams to run amok.
It gets even scarier considering that the chatter is that current mayor Leslie 
O’Shaughnessy intends to run again (good luck without support from CFN viewers and a Bob Kilger to run against Les) the utterly useless, cretinous, and #metooish David Murphy has made no bones about running, and everyone’s favorite failure, Flipper Clement apparently is teasing that she wants to sit in the Mayor’s seat. All of those options are huge parts of the problem of where we sit today.
We simply as the people that pay the bills have to ask if this course and direction is where we want to go? Even labour folk that live in Cornwall aren’t happy about their property tax bills going up nearly 15% in one term.
Small business is literally dying and fighting to survive because the less money people have to spend the harder it is for them to make it.
Contrary to what Councilor Elaine MacDonald stated, paying more tax is not a good thing for those that have to pay it.
Electing someone to council or mayor shouldn’t be a popularity contest. If you were sick you wouldn’t ask your best friend or the hunkiest guy to perform surgery. You’d want the best doctor. Same with legal; yet we vote monkeys onto council who sometimes can’t run their own lives, nevermind be at the head of a near $200M per year corporation.
The good news is that there are some candidates coming forward who want to follow the lead of Brampton Ontario and clean house of city management that clearly are corrupt or have failed. While it can be an expensive pill in a certain sense, corruption and failure cost a lot more. It just makes no sense to reward failure again and again. Corruption and Cronyism always eventually equal utter failure.
People have to understand that being on council is more than photo ops and smiling like the meds have kicked in.
In fact the truly best politicians are those that make the tough decisions and deal frankly in the public so that we can all end up better in the end. In Cornwall too many decisions are bailed on because of corruption and affiliation. And that just leads us to where we are.
2018 may change that, or it may not. What we do know is that the status quo has failed us all and that this group of council effectively have been a complete and utter failure by any metric of measure for success, and that strong and clear change is needed.
What do you think dear CFN viewers? You can post your comments below.
It’s rare that I agree with Admin. But in this case he has hit it right on. The good thing about O’Shaugnessy , Murphy and Clement running for mayor is that we’ll get rid of two of them.
And as I’ve stated before Elaine MacDonald has never met a tax she doesn’t like. It’s clear that she has to go, as well as most of the current crop of monkeys around the council table.
Hugger you win a free coffee! That is the funniest line I’ve read in awhile. I was on the phone talking with someone about the upcoming election when your comment came through! You’ve agreed with some good point, but honestly, if we do not clean up city management it won’t matter as much who is elected. It has to be clear that it’s time to clean house of those that have not earned their keep or worse, corrupted their departments.
Can I have a root beer instead? I don’t drink coffee.
Agreed on all points. But in the end city council is the one who answers to the taxpayers. So, clean that up and then let them clean up the upper layers of city management. Without both happening we really don’t gain anything.
City Council only hires the CAO. Essentially, like Brampton, Council needs to give clear direction to the CAO who then must either follow that direction or pay the price. Ms Adams at this point has way too much baggage and way too poor a record to continue in many people’s opinion.
Then I’d say after the election council get the broom out and clear direction to CAO to clean out the deadwood.
“I think we would all sleep better at night if we knew why we did what we did,” said Conc. Elaine McDonald (Freeholder March 26) Apparently, she wants to revisit the traffic circle issue ? She just doesn’t grasp reality ! Elaine, are you proud of your 4.89 % increase in taxes ? I sincerely hope, you & your fellow “gongers” get the most severe thumping at the upcoming election !
A well known problem? This Mayor gave the CAO full power, thus the clique, fling, managers failings and so on. You can’t do the job, don’t worry, we will hire you help. You can’t do the job because your not at work, don’t worry, we will turn a blind eye. This council proved to be the most gutless on record. Ownership is on this Mayor, you get what you vote for tax payers. Blame the union right? BS