STRUCTURED TOWN HALL

Okay, so maybe eight?

As in that’s how many people I think attended both sessions of the Structured Town Hall that was organized and hosted by Renfrew Town Council and some key members of the town’s administrative staff on Tuesday.

All we were missing was the creaking saloon door and the tumbleweed bouncing down Raglan.

Billed as an exercise in transparency and openness, it apparently wasn’t something that caught fire among the local citizenry, as three people attended the morning session ( if I can rely on the camera angles ) and another five people in the evening session. Both sessions were scheduled for two hours apiece, but neither made it much past the one-hour mark.

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October 16, 2025

MAYOR TAKES LEAVE. WILL HE LEAVE HIS POWERS BEHIND?

Mayor Tom Sidney has taken a leave of absence for “personal” reasons, which leaves Renfrew with an interim Head of Council in the person of Reeve Peter Emon. As indicated in an earlier article, I wish the mayor the best as he navigates those personal concerns.

From the very beginning of their inception, I’ve commented on the use of Strong Mayor Powers as a theoretical construct, as well as looking at them with some greater detail as they are applied right here in town.

I’d like to know what happens to those powers when a mayor, any mayor, leaves Council under these conditions, to wit the taking of a personal leave of absence?

And honestly, where would I go to ask?

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October 15, 2025

MAYOR SIDNEY TO TAKE LEAVE OF ABSENCE

Under the Municipal Act, a member of a municipal council can take a leave of absence for a period of three months and still be able to retain their seat on Council.

So it is for Mayor Tom Sidney, who announced Thursday afternoon that he was taking just such a leave to attend to family matters. The leave takes effect after the mayor concludes his duties today, Friday October 10, and will extend to December 12, 2025.

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October 10, 2025

PLAN ACCEPTED FOR ABANDONED WASTEWATER PLANT

So, what are we to do about that old wastewater plant that’s just sitting there like something out of a really bad Stephen King movie?

Decommissioned some years ago, the facility stands along a bend of the Bonnechere River, and now that it’s been replaced in function by something else, it just sits there, a problem waiting to become a bigger problem. As with all abandoned buildings, you’re going to find broken windows, open windows, degraded material no longer safe for anyone, and three gawdawfully large tanks that were once filled with water, now standing silent, with water without purpose. And as with many other abandoned buildings, there’s almost a siren call that can be heard by anyone who claims membership in Renfrew’s homeless community.

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October 9, 2025

DEATH BY E-SCOOTER

Man, that kid was flying.

When I was a kid myself, I used to have these little fantasies involving me as a cop or soldier fighting the bad guys. I’d even entertain my own demise, sometimes as a result of a huge gunfight with a dozen robbers where I would single-handedly bring them to heel with my revolver that never seemed to run out of bullets despite it being a six-shooter and the math of the situation not looking good. And yes, sometimes bad stuff happens, even in the imagination of a child. One of those bad guys would get a lucky shot in, it would kill me, and I’d immediately go into visuals of my state funeral with throngs of weeping citizens lining the street on both side, not a dry eye anywhere. And all of this before my mom called me in for lunch.

So, like any kid, I visualized myself as a hero, and in this particular case a dead one, with all society grinding to a halt at the loss. Man, I still get teary-eyed just thinking about it.

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October 8, 2025

DAYCARE SAFETY: PROTECTING KIDS FROM TRAFFIC

It was less than a month ago that a man in his seventies lost control of his SUV and plowed into a daycare in Richmond Hill, killing a toddler and injuring six others.

And this isn’t the first time this has happened, either.

The man behind the wheel faces one count dangerous operation causing death and three counts of dangerous operation causing bodily harm. The parents of the 17 month-old boy killed, Liam Riazati, face a crushing loss.

Nobody will argue that, when we send our kids to schools, or daycares, they ought to be safe. Yet some of those same people design daycares, or complexes including daycares, and do so in such a manner as to be seemingly oblivious to the potential for this sort of thing happening.

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October 7, 2025

CAMERAS MAKE A COMEBACK. UNTIL THEY DON’T.

There are sometimes in life where you get a stain on something and, no matter how hard you try, you just can’t get it out. Or maybe it’s a church tune that you can’t get out of your head, and it’s gotten so bad that you find yourself whistling Be Not Afraid in the shower.

My point is that sometimes there are things that never go away, as much as you might like them to.

So there’s these cameras.

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October 6, 2025

DRBIA SEEKS PERMISSION FOR HISTORICAL SIGN AND NATIVITY SCENE

The Downtown Renfrew Business Improvement Area — DRBIA.— is an arm’s length group that operates under the auspices of the Town of Renfrew, and as such receives a budget from the corporation to pursue initiatives and planning dedicated towards improvement and promotion of the town’s downtown core.

What makes such a group particularly effective is the fact that it’s composed exclusively of business owners and commercial property owners that all share a keen interest in the viability and economic success of downtown, the heart of almost any community. These business and commercial interests all contribute to the DRBIA operating budget as well, as they’re all assessed a membership levy, something that presents a bit of an issue on another topic, but not to this one.

The point is that we have people who are invested doing the day to day stuff, but there’s also a financial and legislative tether that means that Renfrew Town Council is the supreme authority when it comes to DRBIA decision-making.

Two items related to DRBIA caught my attention recently in a way that made me want to comment.

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October 3, 2025

STEVENSON CRESCENT

It started out as an Open House at the Information Booth on O’Brien Road.

It was an information session regarding Stevenson Crescent and the road work to be done there. There were charts, diagrams, drawings and all the other public-facing accoutrements on display, with the town itself represented by Andrea Bishop, at the time a manager in the Shovels and Rakes department, and Hannah MacMillan, the communications manager. A third individual, I assume from the engineering company, was also present. Being the only member of the public there at the time, it was kind of awkward, but the three representatives were only too happy to provide details and explanations as part of the Open House.

I’m not an engineer, nor am I an individual particularly concerned with road work here or anywhere else in town, but I think that night represents the top of the mountain for a project that, on paper anyways, looked like a slam dunk.

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October 2, 2025

SEVENTH, STEVENSON, AND DEMANDS FOR INFORMATION

Communication gaps, or possibly even a flat-out dearth of information presents itself as a common theme in just about every Council meeting I’ve attended or watched online. And so it apparently goes for the road work being done on two local projects, one on Seventh Street and the other on Stevenson Crescent.

As has happened before, in fact too many times to mention, some unforeseen factor has been uncovered and has led to changes of scope around these projects and the attending increase in costs.

So it is with both Seventh and Stevenson, as projects originally intended to be “shave and pave” undertakings have ballooned in price because of things “discovered” that should have been in plain sight all along.

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October 1, 2025