THE LIGHTS AT MA-TE-WAY

It was back in October 2024 when Councillor Andrew Dick announced at Council that the ballparks at Ma-Te-Way were going to be lit in the summer of 2025 and “It doesn’t matter what it costs.”

It’s February 2025 and baseball season is just a little over three months away, so we seem to be approaching a time of critical decision-making when it comes to this issue.

There is one thing that’s generally regarded as being certain and where agreement is unanimous. The lights at Ma-Te-Way are a mess, and that mess is going to require some cash to fix. And if the fix is to include the Dog Park and a parking lot, then the cash required will be more than to just light the three fields.

Councillor Dick is a ballplayer, so he’s close to the issue. That’s not a problem in any way, as these ballparks are pretty heavily-used, and they do bring money into the community in terms of user fees and peripheral spending from ball teams on game day or on tournament weekends. So, while calling the ball fields economic engines might be a stretch to a degree, any time a ball team comes to town or stays in town, that peripheral spending does have an impact on restaurants, convenience stores, motels, pizza shops, and yes, beer and liquor stores, although that last area can now be folded into grocery and corner stores as well.

The situation regarding lighting at Ma-Te-Way involves not a crumbling infrastructure, but rather a crumbled infrastructure. In other words, the best-before date was, to put it bluntly, a long time ago, and perhaps mitigated by decisions that could have been made by past councils, but that’s a moot point in that they weren’t made, and so here we are, in the dark.

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February 10, 2025

A STATE OF DISREPAIR

CLICK HERE FOR VISUAL PRESENTATION

When the roof’s caving in, it’s generally regarded as a sign that you’re in some trouble, if not right this minute, then sometime awfully soon.

That’s the kind of thing we’re facing with several properties, or buildings owned by the Town of
Renfrew. Roofs leaking, structural fatigue, mould, and other conditions that make the properties untenable, unsafe, or both.

The short version reads that Renfrew needs to undertake some serious moves towards fixing up or replacing these buildings if we’re to continue to lease them out or have them as a base of operations for municipal staff who use them on a daily basis.

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February 3, 2025

POTTY TUNES THE NEW NORMAL

Why is my music swearing at me?

I mean, there’s no shortage of people out there who wouldn’t let too much propriety get in the way of directing a fairly robust stream of profanity my way. But this is different. This is supposed to be a respite from the hurly burly. A place where I can go to get away from the whole thing, the grind, the acrimony, the recriminations. You know, Town Council.

Many people fall back on their music. They wake up to their tunes, breakfast, lunch, and dinner with their tunes, take their tunes for a walk, drive everywhere with their tunes.

For most of us, it’s our safe place. Our special spot. A place to go, to indulge in one of the seemingly few pleasures of modern life.

Then GAYLE told me to go f**k myself.

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February 1, 2025

PARKING GROUP IDENTIFIED

As I’ve indicated before, parking is a really big deal here in River City, and that impression has been more than validated by the creation of a parking working group, or a PWG, to grapple with the intricacies and complexities involved with parking in a community of some 8500 souls.

This appears to be a comprehensiveapproach to addressing parking issues, where stakeholders, vested interests, by-law enforcement, political actors, municipal staff, and industry experts gather to collaborate and weigh-in on subject that, if improperly handled, can lead to interventions by concerned citizens like Bonnie Mask and her photo album.

Under the general direction of Fire Chief Michael Guest, who also commands the parking desk over at Fort Renfrew, the committee, or working group, will likely sit down with a jug of Tim Horton’s coffee and some baked treats to identify parking needs in the community and hammer out a response that will please everyone.

Except if that were true, we’d be in no need of a working group in the first place, since all of this would have been resolved years ago. But apparently, parking is a fluid issue, a shape-shifter of a thing, meaning it’s a son-of-a-gun of a thing to pin down. Often it’s an exercise in the very best of intentions I suppose, but perhaps lacking the iron fist of enforcement in many cases, leading to a possible disconnect with respect to intentions and policy delivery.

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January 31, 2025

TOWN CONTRACT FOR IT SERVICES UNDER REVIEW. AGAIN.

I don’t know what it is about that radar of mine, but I have to say it’s been a mostly reliable asset of my twenty-some years of being an adult.

I noticed the most recent meeting agenda had a delegation scheduled for a Mr. Ian McFarlane, and surmised it had something to do with that IT contract that has bounced around back and forth, in and out, to and fro, and open and closed for the past month.

It turned out that’s exactly what the delegation was about.

According to Mr. McFarlane, there were a number of irregularities with respect to the awarding of that contract, irregularities that may have led to a different result had they not been present.

Go figure.

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January 30, 2025

AN EXCHANGE OF PASSION

I have to think that it was bubbling under the surface, irrespective of anything I might have to say.

Tuesday night’s meeting of Renfrew Town Council was plodding along, from one report to the next, going in such a way that fighting off sleep was a legitimate issue of paramount concern. The atmosphere was rescued somewhat by Director Eric Withers, who undertook the responsibility of improving the air quality by grappling with the air circulation system headquartered right behind his spot on the the outer ring. Had he not done so, we were looking at the possibility of a mass casualty event where several participants may well have nodded off during a back and forth featuring properties on Mutual Street and the Kumbaya experience offered by the ROMA — Rural Ontario Municipal Association — conference down in Toronto a couple of weekends back.

But then the clock began to wind down towards what many might legitimately consider to be the final minutes, the last trumpet call before go-home time. Suddenly, a match was struck, and it was too close to the powder keg, and in fairness I don’t believe anyone thought there was a keg of powder nearby, or that close. But apparently there was. A big one.

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January 29, 2025

RENFREW STAFF PROVIDE POLICY FOR “CUSTOMER SERVICE”

Kelly Latendresse has tendered a document as part of Tuesday night’s meeting agenda, one where she shares with us her exhaustive review of the town’s customer service policy, a rather generous term to apply to the rather arbitrary nature by which town employees and many elected officials give the public the municipal stiff arm when anyone has the temerity to ask a question.

Finally, at least, thanks to Latendresse, we have a desk identified as the one where the buck stops, and that would be the one occupied by CAO Gloria Raybone. Before this, everyone just sort of looked at everyone else when asked who it was that made the final call on these things. At least now, we have an identifiable in-office postal code.

For a while there, it was tough to figure who exactly Ms. Latendresse was in terms of title and responsibility. I know that she’s a member of Renfrew’s senior administrative staff, that much is clear. But every time I see her, she’s wearing a different hat. And sitting in a different chair.

If this was baseball, and these were the Blue Jays, she’d be the ultimate utility infielder and positional generalist. Can’t hit worth a lick, but a great glove.

A betting line could be opened up for tonight’s meeting to see which of the many possible hats she’ll be wearing this evening.

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January 28, 2025

IT CONTRACT AWARD UNDER SCRUTINY?

The agenda is out for Tuesday’s Renfrew Town Council Meeting and I didn’t get to the bottom of the first page of the thing before I saw something that made my political radar start to ping.

A certain Ian McFarlane will be making a deputation at the beginning of the meeting, and for ten minutes or less he’ll be speaking on something having to do with the procurement of IT services for the town.

At an earlier meeting back in December, a staff recommendation to give a tendered contract to OnServe was shot down by council since, as councillor Kyle Cybulski said, “I don’t know what it is that I’m voting for.”

So, as is the case for most things that are of high interest, it was resolved that the whole thing would be hashed out in-camera, behind the closed doors they love get behind when there’s any chance that somebody might end up looking stupid or appear to have done something not exactly according to Hoyle.

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January 27, 2025

SATURDAY AFTERNOON AT THE LIBRARY

A Saturday afternoon at the library is something special.

I once pulled that trick quite a bit back in the day, back when I was in university, and quite frankly the boys in residence were starting to get on my nerves.

Off to the campus library I would go, and I’d usually park myself at one of the big tables which, on the weekend, were usually there for the taking. During the week, you’d either share one of these with several others, often in groups, or you would go for the semi-privacy of a study carrel, where you could sort of slice yourself off from the rest of the world inside your own little demi-cubicle.

I will say that I managed to get a ton of work done on these occasions, since you’re at the library, and, well, why not? But it was also an exercise in people watching, something I’ve always been keen to do, the student of humanity that I like to think that I am.

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January 26, 2025

HEALTH RENFREW

What is Health Renfrew?

Or just as importantly, who is Health Renfrew? Is there even a “who” in Health Renfrew? Instead of bodies sitting around a board room table, is it only a chequing account?

As officially as I can find out at present — and admittedly I haven’t really looked all that hard yet — It’s an adjunct board of the Renfrew Victoria Hospital, or RVH. For the longest of times, it apparently existed as some sort of shadow entity with some sort of financial affiliation with its larger parent, RVH. In recent times, however, the spotlight of accountability has fallen upon it more intensely and it looks like there might be hell to pay.

What kind of hell? And for what sins did we end up here?

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January 24, 2025