Category: LOCAL

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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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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COUNCIL KEPT OUT OF LOOP ON CAO PERFORMANCE REVIEW

“Ooops, my bad.”

While not a direct quote of Mayor Tom Sidney’s, it still sort of captures his communication with Council about his lack of communication with Council.

As in he dropped the ball, and apologizes for the oversight, both statements that can, in fact be attributed to the mayor.

This is all about the performance review of the Chief Administrative Officer Gloria Raybone, the CAO hired by Council as a whole some months ago to bring in some direction to an otherwise seemingly moribund ship.  Evidently there’s this minor annoyance of needing to have her position confirmed, as if these past several months were some sort of probationary period.  It’s a pro-forma thing, just part of a regular protocol, a regular part of the hiring process.

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A MEETING GETS CANCELLED. OR POSTPONED.

Some might characterize it as being taken to task.  Others might say it was more like being taken to the woodshed.

Whatever your choice, it amounts to pretty much the same thing, as the mayor (Tom Sidney) and the CAQ (Gloria Raybone) were both on the hot seat at the beginning of last Tuesday’s meeting of Renfrew Town Council. 

The accountability piece in question had to do with the mayor cancelling the scheduled Council Meeting for September 9, the reasons given at the time being there were too many questions expected to come forward, and the staff needed additional time to prepare responses for those anticipated questions.

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COUNCIL TAKES A POWDER ON TWO CITIZEN EMAILS

Semantics, sophistry, and a bag of pretzels.

This was the response Councillor John McDonald received when he suggested that staff ought to be compelled to respond to emails sent by residents for information or explanation.

Councillor McDonald was specifically referring to two emails, one sent by a Rose Curley and another by Charlene Riopelle, the former asking about procurement policies for capital projects and the latter having to do with Ma-Te-Way.

You should have seen them twisting in their seats.

But seat-twisting aside, Councillor McDonald was slapped-down in his request, for a number of reasons, some of them patently absurd.

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STRUCTURED TOWN HALL PLANNED FOR MID-OCTOBER

It’ll be two sessions, one starting mid-morning, the other at maybe 5 PM.  Both sessions being limited to a maximum of four hours, since gatherings like these qualify as official council “meetings” and are therefore required to adhere to the procedural rules listed in Clerk Carolynn Errett’s Little Red Book of Municipal Procedure, available at fine bookstores nowhere.  

That shouldn’t amount to any sort of problem, because, honestly, four hours is more than enough for an exercise in transparency and accountability, as well as simply putting faces to the various political and staff positions that are behind the day-to-day workings of the Corporation of the Town of Renfrew.  Offering two such gatherings is, in my mind, more than generous, so I applaud the effort to hold an event such as this, to close any gaps between the citizens/taxpayers and the staff and political types who govern their municipal affairs.

I’m talking about what has been referred to as a Structured Town Hall, where residents can come out to learn more about how they’re governed and to provide some measure of background to various points of concern and/or curiosity people may have with policy, policy direction, decision-making, and all the other stuff that’s part of running a town, or any other place for that matter.

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DEGRADATION OF LOCAL DEMOCRACY

Democracy is a frail and fragile thing.  In fact, it’s absolutely precarious, something we’re seeing all over the world, and, perhaps most noteworthy and alarming, right next door in the great republic to the south.

But democracy is imperilled here in Canada as well, and yes, it clings to life right here in Renfrew, where municipal mandarins and an either weak or complicit, perhaps even incompetent mayor team together to deny democratic process in municipal government.  

Owing to its fragile nature, it’s not terribly difficult for empire builders to trample all over its basic tenets, and people with personal or ambitious agendas represent the greatest threat to democracy, here and everywhere.

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TOO MANY QUESTIONS

Too many questions.

That was the main reason cited by Renfrew’s mayor to explain his decision to “postpone” the regular meeting of Renfrew Town Council scheduled for this past September 9, 2025.  A decision made a couple of hours before puck drop.

Too many questions?

One has to wonder from whom, as in who has all these questions that brings the town to an abrupt halt, not so much in a functional day-to-day manner, but in the way things like democratic responsibility, democratic process, transparency, and accountability are handled, and by extension, respected.

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“FOR CAUSE” DISMISSAL A POSSIBLE TOOL TO ENFORCE ACCOUNTABILITY?

“Get the hell out of my office.”

When you say something like this to another person, you had better be confident in your own security, in your own authority, and have a pretty healthy and robust understanding of where you fit in the grand scheme of things.  

Otherwise, you’re just asking for it.

Those words up top, I’m sure, have been used innumerable times by innumerable people all across this great land of ours, but I want to hone in on them because they were said right here in Renfrew, by a Renfrew treasurer, to an elected Renfrew councillor.

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SPEED DATING PROPOSED AS A MEANS TO COMMUNICATE WITH SENIOR STAFF

Perusing the agenda document released in advance of Tuesday’s double meeting of Renfrew Town Council, I came upon what could only be characterized as an attempt by senior administration to try something bold, something new.

It appears, if you squint, that they’re going to make an effort to — gasp — communicate.  Well how about that?

Perhaps the brainchild of our own senior staff, or perhaps something picked up in fruitful discussions with other municipal CAOs and clerk types at the recent AMO conference, it represents a high-water mark in terms of providing insight into the dark mysteries that swirl in the closely-guarded backrooms of Fort Renfrew.

The plan is brilliant.

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