Ballots are already being returned by voters in areas that employed the mail-in vote method this election.
Revelations at a recent candidate meeting should have been enough to send voters running after the mailman to retrieve their ballot.
County councillor ward candidates in Centre Wellington used candidate nights as a launching pad for a vision that won’t sit well with tax weary residents. Both Jean Innes and Shawn Watters offered up the idea of moving the Wellington County administration centre to Aboyne.
Guelph has been the seat for county government since its inception. The idea of moving to Centre Wellington is not new. From time to time over the decades the idea has been floated, for many of the same reasons – job creation, economic development for surrounding businesses and to be closer to the people.
Once those discussions conclude the reality settles in that the operations in Guelph are so vast, and intertwined with social services, the cost to move would be horrendous.
The development of the Wellington Place grounds has included the new Wellington Terrace, a new OPP station and office space for the public health unit. Land purchased next to Wellington Place will host the new Groves hospital.
The infrastructure upgrades to facilitate the development of the site will benefit the merger of Fergus and Elora services as more intensive development occurs on its periphery.
Although this election has been relatively tame, there are rumblings across various parts of the electorate calling for change. In some circles it involves personalities, but generally, the public seems ready to ease the throttle off the gas, so to speak, when it comes to capital projects.
It didn’t take too long poking at a calculator for us to come up with tens of millions of dollars spent on three new OPP stations, eight-plus libraries and a new county garage, the new Terrace, commitments to three local hospitals plus substantial renovations at county facilities.
The public deserves access to good services and should have pride in its public facilities. However, the cost of moving the administration centre from its current location would be more than the combined cost of the majority of these aforementioned projects. This idea is sheer folly – and frankly, it is scary that there seems to be no end in sight for spending.
At another meeting in Centre Wellington, there was a small drumbeat for change in communication styles and a suggestion to get on social networking or blogging to engage a younger audience. While we applaud the idea of engagement, caution must be the order of the day so this doesn’t become yet another paid staff position. Nothing is for free.
In Guelph-Eramosa the question of Warden Chris White’s remuneration became grist for the mill at a recent candidate night. While the pay is plenty, and worthy of discussion, White is merely receiving the rate of pay ensconced when he arrived at county council. The great irony remains that when self-described tax fighters swept into office in 2004, including White’s predecessor, county council voted itself a sizeable raise, latched onto the employee benefits plan and started participating in a pension plan. Questioning his pay seems to be a shaming exercise; someone really concerned about the topic should be seeking commitments from both candidates involved to support dropping the pay for the top job.
In Erin, the abandonment of council’s code of ethics was raised by Jeff Duncan, a former councillor vying for a seat again. He suggests the code is not working and wasn’t needed in Erin’s history. This of course follows on the heels of yet another round of complaints filed by the current mayor against his current councillors. Perhaps a change of personalities around the table (three are not running locally again), will make the legislation less cumbersome and less hard to follow.
We encourage voters to keep informed. Anecdotally we are given to understand a good percentage of the vote has already been cast – which is lamentable itself. Election season is not over yet.
