The Blue Agave Forum: The Blue Agave Forum -> The Mumpsimus Blog

I note, with a certain sadness, that The Admiral is closing down his/her blog. According to the last message posted on it,

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Sorry to see him (her?) go. I appreciated the humour and the often wicked pokes at council, myself included.

I've said it before, blogging is hard work. It takes a lot of effort, time and dedication. It competes with work, recreation and entertainment. And it requires the writer to stay up-to-date in order to be relevant. Sometimes it becomes a lot like work, not at all like fun.

Local blogs generally seem to have short lives.

It's unfortunate that the Admiral's blog is closing down now, given that the coming election year promises to provide a wealth of material for local satirists. I can only hope Scoop can continue to maintain his.

Another six-hour council marathon last night. And even with that amount of time, by the end of the night we still had not covered everything on the agenda. We broke off in the early part of the comprehensive zoning bylaw "workshop," with many areas still remaining to discuss.

Started at 5 p.m., adjourned at 11. There had been people in the audience waiting all night for some of these items to come forward for discussion. Instead, they went home, likely frustrated at the time spent waiting for something that never even came up.

The structure of the meeting was awkward. After roughly four hours, we broke away from the public view to spend more than one hour behind closed doors with our lawyer, discussing several property-related and legal issues. During that time, the audience, the media and many members of staff simply had to wait. We returned to attempt to finish the remainder of the agenda.

Surely it would have been better to hold the in-camera session at the start, say begin early at 4 p.m. That way our lawyer can leave if he is no longer required - and we're not paying him $600-plus an hour to wait for his time to come. It would mean there is no break in the continuity of the remainder of the meeting.

It would also mean staff could...

We came across a litter of baby snapping turtles on our walk, today.

Unexpected to find them hatching at this late time of the year and heading out onto land. I would have expected them to winter in the nest.

We had walked along the trail through Harbourview Park, Sunday afternoon, crossing over to the mall, and were headed to the back of Canadian Tire to catch the trail at the bridge there and continue on. Just in front of us, a bicyclist had stopped. She was picking up something from the ground. She showed it to us as we approached.

It was a baby turtle. I recognized it as the common snapping turtle - Chelydra serpentina. Even at this young age and small size, the prehistoric beauty of these turtles is easy to recognize. Of course, at this age they were too small to be aggressive. An adult snapping turtle can tear flesh very nastily, and is surprisingly fast and agile. They are quick to attack and defend themselves aggressively. A large snapper has jaws I'm sure could sever a finger carelessly waved in front of it.

We've found adults before, mostly on back roads near the waterfront, and have moved them - carefully - over the road in their direction of travel. That thick armour wasn't designed to withstand a speeding SUV. You have to be

Council has bought the former Cinema 4 building on Huron Street for $1.4 million. While that's a lot of money, consider that half of that comes from a provincial grant and the rest was drawn from town reserves, so it won't come from new taxes.

It's certainly a better use of your tax dollars than, say, wasting more than $400,000 on the mayor's fight against educational development charges, or the $250,000 the county will spend of your tax dollars (and which mayor supported in a closed-door meeting!) on a PR agent to make the county representatives (i.e. the mayor) look more electable next term.

The money for the purchase will come from the following sources:

• Investing In Ontario Funds $700,000 (a provincial grant)
  
• Reserves/Economic Development 355,000 (much better way to spend your tax money than, say on some pointless 'branding exercise')
  
• Tremont Proceeds 100,000 (money from the sale of the building)
  
• General Reserves – Administration 95,000
  
• General Reserves – Human Resources 75,000
  
• Cash-in-lieu of Parking Fees - 75,000

The property is actually worth more than we paid for it, and even if nothing happens with it, it will be worth more in a few years and can be resold at a profit. But...

A certain level of professional courtesy is required to keep things civil and fair at the council table. We should, in a perfect world, behave in a manner befitting of representatives of the public, defending our collective democracy, and not merely individuals or cliques spoiling for a fight, squabbling over territory and trying to make sure we gain the most advantage out of a meeting.

We should respect one another, even if we don't necessarily like one another. And we should respect the ideals of democracy and put them above personal agendas.

Should, not do.

Which is why I was deeply disappointed, Monday, when the mayor and his Stepford supporters refused to defer a motion put forward by the Deputy Mayor, even through she was ill, and could not be there to present and defend it.

Even though I quickly asked for a deferral, the mayor allowed the motion's opponents to speak at length against the motion, then vote against the deferral, and then vote against the motion.

In a political climate where civility, respect and courtesy reigned, the motion would have been deferred out of respect for the missing proponent. There would have been no procedural harm in waiting a week to hear it.

The motion as presented to council read:

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I picked up two CD sets of George Formby Jr.'s music this past month. Easily the most comprehensive collection of Formby music ever compiled, the two sets comprise five CDs each, with almost 250 songs on both. Arranged chronologically, the music takes us from Formby's earliest recording (mid-late 1920s) to the effective end of his career, in 1951. For both ukulele players and Formby fans, it's the ultimate set.

The sets, published by JSP Records, in the UK, are divided into two eras: pre-war (1926-39) and war/post-war (1939-51).

While there have been many other Formby collections released in the past, this one is by far the largest - it comes from the largest and most complete Formby archive, collected by fan Kevin Daly. Daly was not merely an avid fan; he became a recording engineer and producer at Decca, in 1960, so he was acutely aware of the need to preserve old 78s for optimum reproduction on more modern technologies.

The quality of the reproductions in this set is excellent. The only previous collection of this calibre was Decca's 2-LP reissues, The World of George Formby, which also used the Daly collection as the source. That Decca set is long out-of-print and contained some different versions of songs not in this series. But this new...

When the designs for the downtown revitalization were first presented, it seemed like a good idea to have the restaurant patios separated from the storefronts, with a wider pedestrian walkway between patios and the buildings.

After all, it seemed to make sense to create an accessible, comfortable pedestrian zone that was clearly delineated.

Now, after several negative comments from downtown business and restaurant owners*, I've changed my mind. There were considerations I had not been aware of, and after some thought, the concerns raised make it clear that the new design, while perhaps more convenient for pedestrians, would be difficult, if not disastrous, for the restaurateurs.

The plan proposes to widen the sidewalk. In doing so, the patios will be moved away from the restaurants towards the street, 1 metre from the curb. One metre from the storefronts will be reserved for sandwich-board (A-frame) signs and marketing materials (tables during sidewalk sales for example).

But here's what some restaurant owners are now saying this will cause (these are from a letter sent to council by downtown restaurants):

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Do you think politicians should spend your tax dollars to make their image cleaner and sweeter? Basically to buy a makeover at your expense?

Neither do I. But apparently our mayor does.

According to a story in this week's Enterprise-Bulletin, the mayor supported a secret (in-camera) decision at the county last month to spend $250,000 of taxpayers' money on a PR consultant to make the county look good.

Which, in effect, means making the politicians look good.

Coincidence that next year is an election year? Hardly.

As the story points out, the county already budgeted $1,207,953 in 2009 to "operate its own in-house, four-person communications department." But a majority of county councillors - including your mayor - don't seem to think that's enough of your tax money being spent on their own image. Couldn't the already well-funded communications department handle that task? If not, why are we spending tax dollars on them?

No, it seems only a high-profile PR firm that cost an additional quarter-of-a-million dollars of taxpayers' money was the only answer.

As the EB reported,

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Number of times the audience applauded for speakers who spoke against the proposed zoning bylaw that would allow commercial vehicles in residential driveways at last night's public meeting: ten.

Number of times the mayor interrupted the audience to remind them that applause is not appropriate in a public meeting: none.

Number of times Councillor Chadwick reiterated issues raised by BIA members about having patios located on the far side of the new sidewalk: one.

Number of times the mayor interrupted Councillor Chadwick during his comments: one.

I had to wonder last night if the unusual reticence on the part of the mayor to tell the audience to shut up and behave - he's done it many times at public meetings in the past - was a show of partisanship over the issue. After all, there were VOTE members in the audience speaking out against the proposed zoning change. I could not otherwise fathom the reason he did not follow his normal course and interrupt their applause to chide the audience about their exuberant behaviour.

Was it preferential treatment? There have been precedents involving VOTE this term.*

On the other hand, he did interrupt me when I was asking questions about some design issues for the downtown revitalization (issues...

Long-time chess rivals Garry Kasparov and Anatoly Karpov will be sitting down for another match, this week, in Valencia, Spain. In a story on the BBC website, this week's 12-game rematch takes place 25 years after the two the-Soviet chess legends first competed. That historic match was for the world title.

But the two have aged. Kasparov, now one of Russia's opposition leaders, is 58. Karpov is 46. This reminds me of the great matches in the late 19th and early 20th century when players like Lasker and Steinmetz continued to fight at matches long into their senior years. Over the years, world champions have gradually been getting younger. Kasparov was was only 21 when he took on the 33-year-old Karpov, in the 1984 match.

That match was both exciting and controversial. Karpov looked to be the sure winner with a 4-0 lead, but a series of draws followed. Kasparov won his first match in game 32 nad slowly crawled back to close the gap at 5-3. But the match was inexplicably stopped by the head of FIDE (World Chess Federation) on alleged health grounds.

Although both players wanted to continue, the five-month long match was over, with victory awarded to Karpov.

The two squared off again in a 1985 rematch, when Kasparov beat Karpov, an in turn...