Diane Therrien, Cat Herder

Diane Therrien is an honest to god cat herder attempting to coax a group of people all of which own at least one Bon Jovi album into the 21st century. As the lone City Councillor to attend a BA Johnston show, she has seen the darkest depths of humanity and chugged a Labatt 50 about it. Diane Therrien wants to break the cycle of city council and build bridges of governance between the old and young.

The sale of PDI is nigh

So we have this thing called the Peterborough Distribution Incorporated. It is responsible for electrical distribution in the Peterborough area. Since early this spring, City Council has been discussing the sale of PDI to a private investor. It seems that a private investor has been found, although no one explicitly said that there was an offer on the table. What they did say is that the consultation on the potential offer plans to begin on November 1st in Monaghan Ward.

The public consultation itself is going to take the form of open houses that will happen throughout the month of November. Experts and placards will be abundant for people to eat a danish in front of as they try and avoid being asked how they could be helped. Another feature of this public consultation will take the form of a Twitter town hall. This town hall will be attended by yours truly, a few earnest but confused people navigating Twitter for the first time, and a 400 pound person and his twelve twitter accounts.

The consultation process was given a proposed budget of 120,000 to hire Navigant, a consultant company, by city staff, but this was shot down by council. City staff clapped back and informed council that they were going to spend 33,000 on Navigant which is within city staff’s authority to do.

The Council is being choked by the province

Councillor Henry Clarke sent a barn burner of a letter to the province outlining the unsustainable nature of the provincial practice of downloading responsibilities to the municipality. In this case it was relating to annual increases in costs for the paramedic/ambulance services. These services are funded through property taxes, on which Councilor Dean Pappas commented, “property taxes are meant to deal with property, not healthcare”.

Keith Riel brought his indignation to the table by sounding off about an incoming budget shortfall caused by provincial downloading of duties. “We have been in crisis for 2 years, there’s going to be a $2 shortfall in our budget, next year it will be 3.2 million, and it’s not our fault. This is something that should be concerning to all, there is very little on governmental paylist left to cut to balance the budget.”