Scores, Lowe’s, and now the Scotia Bank call centre. It’s becoming clear that Cornwall Ontario simply isn’t a place to succeed in business. Normally closures come after Christmas, but there are starting to flood before.
A weak employee pool, corrupt and incompetent City Hall, scandals, high electrical rates, and runaway taxes simply are not good soil to grow an economy. A lack of leadership and corruption from Bob Peters @ Economic Development in Cornwall is a key factor.
A runaway police budget that still has the chief stating that they need more officers, a secretive fire services that appears to spend as much in training than its work hours, and bad negotiations like the CUPE strike recently inflate costs as well.
The biggest issue has been the hijacking of City Council by Big Labour and in turn the City running local media for the most part. It’s not just city ad dollars, but the tentacles that emanate from that. How can you expect the public to react if the truth is held from them, or even worse, if they are lied to?
Could Bill Kingston and his Cornwall Newswatch survive if his hubby didn’t have a good job? The Seaway News was recently sold, the second time in about a decade, and if the Post Media owned Standard Freeholder didn’t benefit from chain advertising would it still be around, never mind in Print?
Clearly there’s a culture shock and changes needed for Cornwall to be able to compete as losses of jobs and revenue like this will only lead to even higher taxes in a year where the buzz is that Mayor Clement, and her pack are talking a whopping 7% tax hike, chiefly due to idiotic mismanagement like the SCM MPAC scandal, and the even more ludicrous purchasing of an old BOM building to spend millions to turn it into a black box theatre.
The recent addition of development fees has clearly not helped growth either. The mayor just saw her salary now go up by the cost of living, emulating the union cry at most negotiations even though the Cornwall Mayor’s salary is already higher than comparative communities.
It’s time to stop the inmates from running the asylum, but that will take the public getting off its collective posteriors and taking action to ensure that next election change comes; if there are even good candidates available to run.
It’s time to go full BRAMPTON2.0 where Brampton replaced its CAO and fired 25 city managers.
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