In four years, the deal a local radio station signed with an apparently unauthorized and unsupervised member of Renfrew Town staff will come under review, with the town having the opportunity to back out of the deal.
It’s my opinion the town should do just that.
I won’t get into the ins and outs of it, but that radio station should not have their name on that building, Ma-Te-Way, nor should they be allowed to refer to it as they currently do, like it’s theirs. Because it’s not.
This will become an issue in the next municipal election, whether the status-quo types like that or not. The sun shines for us as it shines for them, and I’d like to see God’s will and testament where he bequeathed all of that to any fast-one artists who think they run the place. You may read into that the possibility of town elites, town staff, or town politicians. Those running outside their lanes need to be shown their lanes, or disqualified from the event altogether.
In four years time, I expect that the naming rights for Ma-Te-Way as a whole will be governed by an RFP, or Request For Proposal, a standard that everyone apparently or conveniently forgot about last time out. There are some of us who ought not feel good about the good fortune that came their way last time under suspicious circumstances. But I don’t know if those people see it that way, as if their ethics may have have been parked on the other side of their enormous egos.
For anyone with their name stapled to the place right now, they can throw their name in the ring once again, only this time there will be a ring with others allowed to join. The pathetic town policy of first-come first-serve — probably drawn up after the fact in an exercise of legitimization — will be gone, and won’t mean what it meant in the past, where the first-comers were likely the only ones to know about the whole naming thing in the first place. If that’s how it went down, and we’re not sure, then such a thing cannot be allowed to happen again.
An even better result would be one where the facility is restored to its proper name, Ma-Te-Way. Maybe a Donor Wall at Ma-Te-Way like they do at the hospital. Significant donors would be etched in stone as people who stood up for something right.
All this notwithstanding, the one place, and one group who could put this whole thing to bed once and for all would be the Town of Renfrew, who could just decide to not offer naming rights for the entire building. Maybe we don’t care that they do this “naming” stuff everywhere else, like that was the conclusive, argument-winning standard. Maybe we’re not everywhere else. Maybe we have pride here.
If Council were to take on that level of courageous leadership, that would be the end of the whole thing right there. Since a municipal election will take place before all of this transpires, it’s anyone’s guess who might be present packing that kind of resolve, that kind of leadership.
Maybe those people are already there.
Should a radio station with a grandiose and self-congratulatory owner become petulant and threaten to leave town over any of this, I feel I could live with that. It’s not like the town needs an oldies FM radio joint to properly define itself. If it were to come to that, I believe Renfrew can survive without them, or any other business that’s lost its way and considers itself absolutely indispensable. If that’s the way they’d like to play it, then they can go play it somewhere else.
Renfrew is growing. It can stand on its own without any of the small-town, small beer ego-puffery of self-declared elitists feeling like they have the run of the place. Same goes for any of their acolytes, some of whom may have been associated with local government and administration when the last deal went down.
This isn’t Louisiana, and Louisiana-style old-boy cronyism isn’t the preferred look anymore.
Government of the community, by the community, for the community.
Abe Lincoln would be proud.
NEWSMAGRENFREW 