By Jamie Gilcig
As repeatedly shared, the recipe for insanity is to repeat something that doesn’t work.
Just a snippet from last night’s council meeting. Our corrupt and rigged council voted themselves a modest raise, a bit this year to catch up with tax changes, and bit more because Elaine MacDonald seems to think sitting on council is “work”. Then again Elaine thinks raising taxes is a good thing.
The funny thing about work though is generally you only get a raise when you earn it? Record tax increases, a flat lining economy and utterly backward things like suing MPAC as well at failing our waterfront, seniors, working poor,and economic development usually are not grounds for pay rises.
But I think we do have some common ground. Surely a council, which ultimately steers a $200+ million dollar budget should be of hopefully the best people in the community and not just union driven stooges, and tax teat parasites right?
They should have some leadership skills and knowledge of how to make things function; because city management surely doesn’t seem to judging from the cat issue and our construction and housing issues?
For the record, councillors Claude McIntosh, Elaine MacDonald, Syd Gardiner, Dean Hollingsworth, Carilyne Hebért, Glenn Grant, Eric Bergeron and our allegedly closeted Mayor, Bernadette Clement, voted in favour of the pay increase. Maurice Dupelle, (whose day job inherited all the cool junk left in the BOM building mysteriously, and Todd Bennett voted against. Justin Towndale abstained from the vote, well because he’s very gifted and lacking a backbone. Is he still living at home with his folks?
At $16K per year we really can’t attract that. I don’t blame people for not wanting to pay more with the lack of results we get, but maybe, just maybe it’s time to think outside of the box?
For example right now we have approximately 10x 16K for a total of $160K or so. Imagine, spending less than 1% of a city budget on the monkeys we put in charge to spend it? Isn’t that insane and backwards?
Now let’s pump up council “salary” to 1% of the budget yearly which would give us a pie of about $200K moving forward.
Now let’s chop council down from 10 to 6. We now jump to a “salary” of $33K. Would it double the quality of our current mess of demented seniors and wannabee seniors on council? Maybe.
Now what if we added in a bonus system? Keep taxes down, get a bonus. Raise the population by X, get a bonus. Raise taxes generated by growth, get another bonus.
It’s not rocket science, unless of course your Mark Boileau.
It really is time for people to wake up and go a full Brampton 2.0.
We need a real council with some clear direction that will benefit the community as the direction we’re going is scary and we’re already seeing people, even seniors, moving away, some even to Quebec, and an economic de Velopment in Cornwall.
It’s time to take a step back; look at what’s not working, fire Maureen Adams, and elect some fresh blood that’s not sold itself to certain entities and interests.
Cats. What an odd and silly waste of time and money thanks to Chris Rogers; who really should be working for another municipality.
After much hand wrenching and misinformation the plan is to legislate cat sterilization. IE, if you own a cat it better be fixed. This in a city where our local vets gouge the public which is a HUGE factor in the problem as people can’t afford taking care of their animals over getting cool tattoos or beard tending products.
Many of same said people like to let Frisky out as it saves on kitty litter.
So Cornwall wants to pass by laws that will get killed in court, cost the city a lot of legal bills, and ultimately fail. They also want to use tax money to subsidize desexing of cats.
They even want to give the OSPCA $5K for a clinic that charges more than some regional vets. Yes, if you go out into the counties or over the border it’s much cheaper for vet services as we recently covered in our story about over the border vet tourism LINK
And the city wants to give some of our crazy cat ladies vouchers to get their rescue cats fixed so they can be released without breeding.
Laws that are created need to be evenly applied and easily enforceable. This seems to simply be a bad idea copied from some other place. And the big issue in Cornwall isn’t actual feral cats, but pets allowed to wander outside and even worse, abandoned by bad owners.
Pet ownership costs money. If people can’t figure it out they probably shouldn’t own pets. Likewise, people shouldn’t be letting their animals loose, especially when not on their own property. If you don’t have a fence then that’s what leashes are for.
It’s not rocket science and the city should not be subsidizing pet ownership while taxes keep rising. Does it make any sense for people who pay to upkeep their pets to pay for others who don’t at the hands of the taxman?
Again, another reason to vote in a council with some reasoning skills and employ Brampton 2.0 next election and stop wasting our time and money!
Thank you to all those idiot people who re-elected this sad bunch of politicians. You all fell for the b.s. before the election when they chose to let the NEW council the decision to vote on an increase. They compare this city to much larger cities that are 2 or 3 times larger. Hey you get what you deserve. Justin Towndale is right, we need to get back to the ward system.Then you’d get results.
Thank goodness I live in South Glengarry!
I do not have a problem paying politicians well. Paying them well does not guarantee better candidates. We pay our PM quite well. Look at the incompetent we got. As for these Cornwall politicians. They only represent 4,700 people each. To raise their pay is a slap in the face for taxpayers. I also agree Cornwall’s J T is a coward who could not take a stand on an issue.