The CBC just did a story on Cornwall that certainly won’t help what ails.
A population over 5 years older than the rest of the province is only a part of the tale.
The biggest problem is the Mayor herself, her team and her supporters.
When CFN started in 2009 she was a councilor. Many of those on council and management are still their sucking their salaries back.
Not a single issue of importance has been addressed since then.
Pitt Street (which needs to be changed to Gosling) and Montreal Road are both ghost towns or coke dens. When tattoo joints and pawn shops are some of your busiest retail outlets you have an issue.
While it’s easy to point fingers at Flipper Clement and her hand picked team of stooges and council members, there are some simple truths and that essentially is through media desperation the news is filtered through city hall to the public who drink the kool aid.
The public sector locally vote for the people that don’t question them.
Example, the police in Cornwall who essentially get their budgets and teams rubber stamped. Sgt Chad Maxwell who signed off on this writer’s false arrest and was spokesperson for Pelletgate just got promoted to Inspector. That tells those of us not on the koolaid something.
The police budget is #taxrape yet council after council ducks even asking for a justification of real spending. Again, compared to SD&G we’re spending nearly 3 times as much. Why? It can’t be all those rowdy seniors inflaming the budget? Maybe the high cost of changing from the Cornwall Community Police Service to Cornwall Police Service on the whim of Chief Aikman?
Cornwall is now not only hurting growth in its high taxation and red tape policies, it’s hurting struggling businesses in the DBIA by now paying the rent for hand picked new businesses; most that essentially compete with those paying into the DBIA.
Does it really make any sense to subsidize a new food biz downtown when some of those there are struggling and most that open shut down soon?
Workers are in short demand. There simply is not a workforce here to support what exists and certainly not enough to expand. Ask Mr. Leclerc how it’s looking for his new plant (in private). People will not move to Cornwall to make $17 per hour; and certainly not visible minorities who are for the most part treated as second class citizens if they are not within their own groups like our strong Muslim community.
Cornwall needs Brampton 2.0. It needs to elect a strong team of council with a clear mandate to get fiscal results. It needs to get rid of old dead wood at City Hall like Mark Boileau, Bob Peters, and the guy many aren’t sure of what he does, Geoff Clarke.
When taxes keep compounding while services and infrastructure suffer the cash is going somewhere and in many cases it’s into bad management.
There’s a lot that can be done to improve Cornwall and make it attractive.
We need to stop attacking those that want to build here. I was speaking to one contractor yesterday. They hire master trades people only to have unqualified people at city hall slow things down questioning master paperwork. Those delays cost thousands. Would you want to build here again? The city needs to have people on its staff with a clear mandate to support and assist growth; not hamper and frustrate it. That’s where we need to invest money. Every person jerked around by City Hall talk, and that talks costs us all money.
We are having a housing crisis in Cornwall. While limp media and the city will cite a lower house average any idiot can see the truth; that we simply still have enough substandard inventory to keep those averages low. New properties cost as much to build in Cornwall than anywhere else.
Cornwall simply needs to support an attitude of inclusion and growth. The people steering now like our hypocritical, corrupt, and incompetent mayor and those that support her simply are not ever going to be able to move the stick forward.
And to show how clear this is one need look no further than the lack of culture in this community and the farce that was the death of its public art gallery and the near $1M spent on an old bank building that will remain closed for a year for a study that should’ve been done before committing about a half million dollars to purchasing it. Especially when the empty building that housed the art gallery was available right across the street for less than the cost of the study.
That’s not good leadership or vision. That’s young person with mom’s credit card and no idea what to buy next. Maybe more zucchini for all on public lands….
The people of Cornwall can do better. It’s just a question of if they want to.