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It's all been my fault...
09 September 2010
I'm always to blame. Now it seems the reason council was "divisive" this term is because I failed to work with "the council the public chose and not the council they wanted." "They" being Deputy Mayor Cooper and me.
Thus sayeth the mayor in an article in today's Collingwood Connection, headlined "Carrier says Cooper, Chadwick made council divisive."
Okay, so I have a partner in crime, the DM. We're both guilty, it seems.
It's not the mayor's autocratic, exclusionary style of politics, nor his inability to lead. It's not his L'etat c'est moi attitude towards the public and council, either. It's not his lack of openness or his avoidance of public input. It's not the snide comments he has made about me or the DM to the media or at the table. It's not because he refused to socialize after hours with council and department heads like the former mayor did, nor has he engaged us in collective social activities that would have helped us bond and learn to respect one another. It's not because he set the tone for council in the first two weeks of this term by monitoring council's email. It's not because he argues and interrupts at the table anytime a view that isn't consistent with his own is voiced.
It's my fault. Or our fault. The mayor says so, and he's THE ONE of nine.
Now the mayor has never, in the last four years, asked me how I voted, or who I would have liked to have seen on council, back in 2006. So his comment indicates great mental powers to discern what has never been discussed. He must have used his Super Telepathy to read my mind and find out what my darkest, deepest innermost thoughts about the makeup of this council were.
Do the issues of today have any relevance to an election four years ago? I would have said not, but according to the mayor, they do.
"A lot of the dissent around council was created by Cooper and Chadwick," the mayor is quoted as saying.
Dissent is what you call it when you stand up and demand open meetings when others are determined to go behind closed doors, or demand public input when others seem determined to avoid it all all costs, or request public presentation of legal fees when others would rather not see them brought into the light of public scrutiny.*
Work with council? We've spent four years doing so. But when we don't agree with the mayor, we're the cause of any dissension. I suppose we might have been good little rubber stamps, although why he needs more of those is beyond me. I have never been comfortable tugging the forelock when the aristocrats ride through the village.
Dissent is, of course, the cornerstone of democracy. Democracy is not measured by how well we all agree, but on how well it tolerates dissent. Obviously not very well, in this town, given the mayor's comments.
I guess he's just gotta get in his last kicks before he's gone from the table. I suppose it was too much to hope he'd have his epiphany before he left and got converted to democracy.
~~~~~
* The mayor was the force behind the fight against the education development charges. Had he won, it would have benefitted a handful of developers and maybe a few new home buyers, but instead he lost and it cost local taxpayers $428,000. The mayor led the battle to repeal the permits for the Admiral Collingwood Place development, which cost the taxpayers $110,000 in legal fees and gave the community a gravel pit on the main street. Some folks don't like to have these numbers recalled.
NB. The rest of the article is about a discrepancy in the DM's election literature, in her reporting of the debenture. Sure it's not quite right, but it seems to have drawn the mayor's ire enough to make a picayune difference into an issue quite out of proportion over the actual amounts. Whether the debenture has increased by 180% or 92% isn't all that relevant: it's gone up a large amount, more than any of us can count. It would have been higher, but we killed the Heritage Park project and a few other things, so the total dropped a bit.
Thus sayeth the mayor in an article in today's Collingwood Connection, headlined "Carrier says Cooper, Chadwick made council divisive."
Okay, so I have a partner in crime, the DM. We're both guilty, it seems.
It's not the mayor's autocratic, exclusionary style of politics, nor his inability to lead. It's not his L'etat c'est moi attitude towards the public and council, either. It's not his lack of openness or his avoidance of public input. It's not the snide comments he has made about me or the DM to the media or at the table. It's not because he refused to socialize after hours with council and department heads like the former mayor did, nor has he engaged us in collective social activities that would have helped us bond and learn to respect one another. It's not because he set the tone for council in the first two weeks of this term by monitoring council's email. It's not because he argues and interrupts at the table anytime a view that isn't consistent with his own is voiced.
It's my fault. Or our fault. The mayor says so, and he's THE ONE of nine.
Do the issues of today have any relevance to an election four years ago? I would have said not, but according to the mayor, they do.
"A lot of the dissent around council was created by Cooper and Chadwick," the mayor is quoted as saying.
Dissent is what you call it when you stand up and demand open meetings when others are determined to go behind closed doors, or demand public input when others seem determined to avoid it all all costs, or request public presentation of legal fees when others would rather not see them brought into the light of public scrutiny.*
Work with council? We've spent four years doing so. But when we don't agree with the mayor, we're the cause of any dissension. I suppose we might have been good little rubber stamps, although why he needs more of those is beyond me. I have never been comfortable tugging the forelock when the aristocrats ride through the village.
Dissent is, of course, the cornerstone of democracy. Democracy is not measured by how well we all agree, but on how well it tolerates dissent. Obviously not very well, in this town, given the mayor's comments.
I guess he's just gotta get in his last kicks before he's gone from the table. I suppose it was too much to hope he'd have his epiphany before he left and got converted to democracy.
~~~~~
* The mayor was the force behind the fight against the education development charges. Had he won, it would have benefitted a handful of developers and maybe a few new home buyers, but instead he lost and it cost local taxpayers $428,000. The mayor led the battle to repeal the permits for the Admiral Collingwood Place development, which cost the taxpayers $110,000 in legal fees and gave the community a gravel pit on the main street. Some folks don't like to have these numbers recalled.
NB. The rest of the article is about a discrepancy in the DM's election literature, in her reporting of the debenture. Sure it's not quite right, but it seems to have drawn the mayor's ire enough to make a picayune difference into an issue quite out of proportion over the actual amounts. Whether the debenture has increased by 180% or 92% isn't all that relevant: it's gone up a large amount, more than any of us can count. It would have been higher, but we killed the Heritage Park project and a few other things, so the total dropped a bit.
He thinks that since he and some others were elected to Council that ALL members of Council were obligated to follow their direction, without question or second thought.
Where is his basic understanding of how this all works. The voters gave him a mandate to 'lead', not to 'dictate'.
Those that are brave enough to speak "this is not right" should be considered heros and not villains.
He should have run for "Emperor". Then he could have executed those that offended his imperial dictates.
...and....his bald face attempt to smear Cooper, and promote his protegee (and partner) Jeffery is enough to make me ill.