Tag: renfrew-ontario

COUNCIL SCRAPS OVER HR COMMITTEE MEMBERSHIP

The background to this is fairly simple.

Council, until recently, would receive reports from the various committees and departments that undertook the business of the municipality.  One of those committees was an HR Committee.  The head of that committee would be part of any employee grievance process.

When Council transitioned to a Committee of the Whole format, those individual committees went by the wayside.  As for human resources matters, Council still had an HR Liaison in place, but that person wasn’t formally designated as being the replacement for the “committee” that made up the town’s part of a grievance complaint.  That’s a requirement in the collective agreement that exists between the town and its employees, and a requirement that’s not currently being fulfilled after the disbanding of the committee structure.

Staff recommended that, to close this gap, a motion was needed designating what this grievance team might look like, and several options were tendered to Council, and one of those options was recommended.

In my opinion, the staff recommendation was flawed in the first place.

It may have cemented or concretized the protocol as it currently exists, but that’s not a good enough reason to hammer forward with it.

I’m talking, again, about what form of council/staff representation takes the reins in a human resources situation involving a contract grievance brought forward by an employee.

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RECORDED VOTES THE NEW NORMAL?

Renfrew Clerk Carolynn Errett is going to find herself busier than she currently is.

During the last Renfrew Town Council meeting, no fewer than three councillors requested recorded votes.  Usually votes sail past without this technicality, but when they do, anyone beating around the bushes for voting records of politicians would be stymied by the fact that the vote would be recorded as passed or defeated, and the vote count, but not the names of the individual councillors, nor the names of the mayor or reeve, would be attached to those votes.

It appears the campaign machines of three councillors have cranked up, and the sage advisors behind those campaigns have advised their boys to request recorded votes with names attached.

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POILIEVRE “NOT A MAGA GUY”

“He’s not a MAGA guy.”

That’s what U.S.President Donald Trump said this week about Canada’s Pierre Poilievre, leader of the Conservative party and assumed next prime minister after the next federal election, something that can happen sooner rather than later if the political environment versus the United States remains hot or heats up even more.

All razors have two sides, and that’s what makes them dangerous, especially in the hands of little kids, who have a better chance of hurting themselves than others, I guess depending upon what they do with the thing prior to inflicting damage upon themselves.

Things have not been going well recently for Poilievre, as his fortunes appear to be tied to two large things that he may not have accounted for, but really ought to have seen coming:  the resignation of Justin Trudeau and the ascendence of Trump as a de-facto dictator wannabe in the United States.

I can’t understand how theres’s not a 4’ x 8’ bulletin board in the war room over at Fort Tory that prominently features two big-idea questions:

What would we do if Trudeau were to resign?

What would we do if Trump came out swinging at us (Canada) like he intends to cause harm?

I guess those questions somehow eluded the big-thinkers in the Tory War Department, that hothouse of Conservative campaign-fighting, complete with its own rhyming section and slogan machine.  

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CARS AND CAMERAS

Did you realize that the Town of Renfrew was part of a conduit operation whereby cars stolen in Southern Ontario, primarily the Greater Toronto Area, are transported through the town en-route to Montreal before being shipped overseas?

Drivers of these stolen vehicles are paid to get them to Montreal.  With the heat rising in terms of law enforcement along Highway 401, the back highways have become more attractive to these Pony Express types, and a lot of those secondary routes will take these drivers, and these vehicles, right along our very own Raglan Street and O’Brien Road, or Burnstown Road.

The thing is, we’re on to the dirty little bastards.

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A MUNICIPAL EXERCISE IN BLAME SHARING

The Town of Renfrew wants your input.

Actually, they want your complicity.

The town is pumping a survey of theirs where they hope to get some direction on where to go as they approach the time when they have to do The Big Reveal, also known as the 2025 Municipal Budget.

It’s not a document they’re overly excited about, mostly because it’s going  to be brutal on you, Mr. and Mrs. Taxpayer of Renfrew, Ontario, the people who foot the bill and the people who will be most angry when their tax bill shows up in the mail.

The very people who will be most angry at…them.

They’re going to present this as an example of their commitment to openness and transparency, to demonstrate to you how sensitive they are to your feedback, how they’ve discovered the advantages and benefits of being up-front with the people they provide services for and to.

Sure it is.

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A FESTIVAL OF ERRORS?

In conversation with all the gossip-mongers out there who specialize in small-town hogwash, perhaps the topic that comes up most often, outside of Ma-Te-Way of course, is the Renfrew Bluegrass Festival, or more particularly, the cancellation of the Bluegrass Festival once hosted by the Town of Renfrew.

This festival, and its cancellation, appears to have been in the gunsights of Mayor Tom Sidney from the get-go after his election as mayor in the 2022 municipal elections.

Landslide Tom — he won by 13 votes — apparently told his newly assembled Council that the Renfrew Bluegrass Festival was no longer going to be a thing, and that he was going to be putting the boots to what a lot of other people seem to think was a wildly successful venture.

Why?

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FORMER CAO A MYSTERY MAN

Who is Rob Tremblay?

Over the past several months, I’ve had plenty of conversations with numerous locals regarding local government, local governance, the administration of local governance, and the general way in which things are done or not done when it comes to this sleepy little town along the banks of the mighty Bonnechere.

It’s amazing, though, how often that name pops into the conversation on its own.  I don’t know Rob Tremblay from a head of lettuce, and similar to a head of lettuce, information on him seems hard to come by.

I know he was the CAO —Chief Administrative Officer — of Renfrew.  And then he wasn’t.

Just like that, poof, a lingering puff of smoke, and there he was, gone.  Surely not enough time in that office to leave a footprint.  And yet, from the conversations I’m having, you would think that he not only left a footprint, but a bootprint with a bruise.

I didn’t meet anyone who really pumped his tires, I can tell you that.  And as I said, I don’t know the fellow, or know of the fellow, other than he kept coming up unbidden in conversations.  Not that I’m an elite investigator or anything, but it surely means something.

It means there’s either something more out there to be known or there’s an individual in desperate need of a reputational reboot, at least as it pertains to a sleepy little town along the banks of the mighty Bonnechere.

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RUNNING FOR MAYOR

Who would want to be the mayor of Renfrew?

Other than perennial candidate Cal Scott, what person would have the willingness to take on a thankless position at the head of a table of squabbling councillors and overly-confident and assertive administrative types?

Is it the base salary of $20,425?  Add committee and board assignment remuneration to this base salary, but where does that get you?

As recently as 2022, the mayor landed some $42,400, so one could maybe be forgiven for assuming that the mayor’s position took an almost twenty grand haircut in the two years since.

My point here is that it can’t be for the cash, at least not in 2025.  Maybe in 2022, when it was all rainbows and cherry blossoms, but not now.  At least I don’t think so.

Trying to get information on this sort of thing is like sitting in the dentist’s chair while they take multipole measurements of each tooth in your mouth while everyone in the room gets older.  Because of this, I’m going to take the $42,400 number as my working number, and to hell with what the internet says.

So, after all that, my question remains, who would want to be mayor of this place?  Is just over forty grand enough money for the self-abuse that surely follows everyone who wears the chain of office?  And if it’s not, how much salary would be enough?

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RENFREW’S IT DEBACLE

I guess there’s times in life where you just have to decide who it is you’d rather be sued by.

Imagine putting yourself in a position precarious enough that you can clearly see that, no matter what you do, somebody’s going to come at you with civil litigation.

Then, and simply for the point of making an argument, what if you were to put the corporation you work for in that precarious position?

At least to me, and I’m often alone in my thinking, none of anything above strikes me as good business, personal, corporate, or anything in between.

Getting sued, one way or another, is generally an indicator that something’s gone wrong, that somebody or group of somebodies messed up, that a grievance ensued, a grievance whose only remedy is cash.

The Town of Renfrew has signed an Information Technology (IT) service-provision contract with a company called OnServe, who by all accounts is a straight-up legitimate choice for the job had the award not been called into question, not by anything they did or might have done, but rather for the potentially and possibly fatally-flawed process that was utilized by town staff in awarding the contract in the first place.

That was a three-year contract worth approximately $85,000/year, which roughly extends out to $235,000 over the course of the deal.

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COUNCIL MEETING TONIGHT

If sparks fly tonight, I have to confess I have no idea where they may originate from.

Looking over the agenda of tonight’s Renfrew Town Council meeting, the content suggests a pro forma meeting where nothing terribly contentious seems to be on tap.

But one can never be certain, right?  Complacency is not something that I’d recommend, since it was only two weeks ago where I was fighting off sleep only to have a hockey fight break out.  Not that we approached anything you might see in the parliaments of places like Taiwan or Turkey or elsewhere where the gloves hit the ice and otherwise dignified parliamentarians clamber over furniture to get at their rivals, but still, you just never know if someone in the room has a motion hidden in their back pocket that they may brandish as a way to get some juice into the YouTube livestream broadcast.

My YouTube spotter informed me that there were over 300 people watching at one point last meeting, which is more people than simultaneously listen to Renfrew’s only radio station, something advertisers should take note of.

When we get to the point where we can sell ads on a municipal YouTube livestream, then we’ve really accomplished something of substance.  Additional scrutiny of those viewing metrics show that additional people watched the video after-the-fact, which is really something, and hopefully not an indictment of what’s on television on a Tuesday night.

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