Cornwall Ontario – They say in 12 Step that you can’t truly start your recovery until you hit rock bottom.
This 2018 election normally would be that rock bottom. Time will tell if it’s so.
A corrupt city management and council have essentially rigged the election. All you have to do is look at who endorsed who.
There is not a single candidate for mayor worthy of a vote. There are not 10 candidates out of 30 worthy of voter consideration, nevermind a vote.
It’s been a dark election with very little information available as many of the candidates simply didn’t participate in the process. Very little news coverage has occurred. Almost no debate among council in an age where the mayor really doesn’t have as much impact as you think in a council.
Our outgoing mayor stated that taxes could be up 7% next year alone. That should be grounds for a council to blow out CAO Maureen Adams and her flock of monkeys.
It really is time for Cornwall to go full Brampton 2.0 as we now have insanely high taxes and hydro that is more expensive than Hydro One rates. Seniors are leaving, families are leaving, business is leaving for Quebec! Yet most of the candidates support the BOM dark shuffle art gallery project which most reasonable people in Cornwall oppose.
Here is a brief rundown of this hot mess.
For mayor the most likely winner is Bernadette Clement who only now, after 12 years on council, is talking about team building. During those 12 years she ran for MP twice, had breakfast sessions with Kathy Wynne (who went with Mitzie Hunter instead, who didn’t have local scandals) played a major role in the loss of our public art gallery, and essentially shifted metric tons of business to NAV CAN away from places like the Best Western. (Ask Paul Lefebvre if he’s ever going to vote for Flipper or Liberal again? )
David Murphy is actually worse. He’s actually too pathetic for me to write about.
Our about to be defeated mayor was put there by this newspapers viewers on a platform of change and justice. Out of the gate he bit the hand that fed him and the result was a term of picture taking to make Guy Lauzon proud. For a struggling real estate agent the near $250K he earned must’ve been a nice retirement top up.
On council it’s hard to make an argument for any to be re-elected. The problem is that the new candidates for the most part are even worse. We have three running whose salaries are paid for by the city, but because they don’t directly work for the city they loophole their way into the race.
Anyone that votes for the following council candidates are part of the problem, or like Elaine MacDonald, think higher taxes are a fine thing.
If you vote for any of the following you really should seek medical attention.
Justin Towndale
Carilyne Hebert
Elaine MacDonald
Carson Andrews
John Rattray
Todd Bennett
Eric Bergeron
Kelly Bergeron
Alex De Wit
Syd Gardiner
Glen Grant
Claude McIntosh
Heather Megill
Mary Jane Proulx
That is not an endorsement for any of the remaining candidates. I will not be endorsing a single candidate in this election this year. It’s that bad. There are a few glimmers of light, but mostly this has been a group that clearly doesn’t understand what it means to “serve” the public.
It’s been a group that doesn’t understand the importance of Democracy. That’s scary.
Some of the candidates for example, expressed actual fear of repercussions if they even gave interviews to this newspaper. That’s scary too, because if they have fears at that level imagine what would happen if elected?
The only way change can occur is if the people of this community get fed up enough to do something.
You need to attend council sessions. You need to challenge the city to justify the #taxrape. You need to hold people accountable for how they abuse our tax base, businesses, and citizens. You need to form your own opinions, based on fact, on the issues that are important to you.
We live in a city with an extremely corrupt justice system, police force, and city government. Most of our government agencies conspire via a web of connected leaders which even spreads to local charities.
You can’t grow. You can’t build. You can only go backwards with that structure in place and that can no better be stated than this election which most likely will see a very low voter turnout.
This writer knows over half a dozen good candidates(including yours truly) who chose not to run because of how bad things are and will be this term. I can’t blame any of them after watching this farce roll out.
And ultimately the blame has to go to the people of Cornwall who’ve allowed it.
You can’t blame the corrupt management or council. You can’t blame limp media coverage that panders for the few pennies the city spends still after essentially trying to create its own defacto news service. Like the old saying goes:
You get the government you deserve.
It’s time to be the change. We all now will have four years to work on that change and make sure the embarrassing travesty that has been the 2018 Cornwall election never occurs again.
Vanity, they name is Bernadette. The candidate who suggests she earned her stripes by overcoming the challenges of womanhood. colour, blah, blah… But what experience — as a parent? or breadwinner? — juggling family and work, suffering to set a table while paying for the ego trip of a political pfart catcher (and friends) who couldn’t make the big leagues.
For the most part I agree with the article. There are some things I slightly disagree with. But I do not feel like getting into those or discussing them at this time.
But perhaps if those twelve had run and had advertising / signs they may have made a difference. But we’ll never know, eh?
It will be the same old song over and over and over again until the sheeple of Cornhole wake up and learn to be active and take part in the local politics. No changes, just a recycling around the horseshoe and the same old BS going around year after year after year. The beggers working for the town and at the same time there to collect more money from the sheeples mighty high taxes. Change????
I just went to vote. Amani Aburamadan, Jack Lindsey, Brent Charles, Mark McDonald, Carol Boileau and John Rathway. And for mayor. NOBODY. There was nobody worth a carp voting for mayor.
Hi Pete, I’m curious why you’d vote for Ratbag Rattray? I kinda understand some of the others and of course your vote is yours to use as you wish 🙂 Democracy is a beautiful thing when it works.
Jamie, honestly I don’t known him at all, but a friend of mine says he’s a good guy. I just went by that. All the others I know about. Maybe I should have done some research on Rathray. I was hoping for a better group of candidates. Ah but in a few years I’m going to move away. Kinda like Merrickville, Brockville or Smith Falls ( but not for the weed). Even Kingston might be a thought.
he’s big on the BOM art centre project – he also boycotts this newspaper and refuses to answer any questions we ask of him – whatever merits he may have, he certainly shouldn’t be elected to office. If Brock Frost still answers my calls, as well as several other current councilors, anyone wanting to be on council should be too. If they don’t respect Democracy and a Free Press is tantamount to a successful Democracy, they shouldn’t be elected.
Jamie, I wholeheartedly agree with you on Democracy, I was also unaware of his BOM art centre support. That’s such a huge waste of good taxpayer money.
Honestly I thought of some things reminissing since I was 3 years old (boy that was one hell of a reminissing at age 67 and the town hasn’t changed a bit since then. No kidding it even went more backward than ever before. At least back then you had qualified people running for mayor and council but today it is a real joke. Fitzie said you can say that again. LOL LOL. ROLF!