ron's blog

[img_assist|nid=61|title=Michael Veenstra|desc=Michael Veenstra speaks to city council's economic development and planning committee on Tuesday.|link=node|align=right|width=500|height=332]Sometimes you have to work at finding an excuse to punt an unpleasant chore down the road. At other times, the excuse just presents itself.

City councillors did not have to find any justifications, this time around, for their latest delay of the development charges debate.

In December, they put off the difficult decision on whether or not to reinstate the fees to builders by arguing developers needed more time to study the issue.

This time, the reason was the requisite consultant's report, the quote for which has gone stale.

There's no disputing we need a fresh quote, since the Hemson Consulting proposal is based on 2010 figures. The question should be why the city didn't suggest getting the fresh quotes in December, knowing we'd have to have the debate anyway.

[img_assist|nid=59|title=|desc=A still image from the film 'NCR: Not Criminally Responsible'|link=none|align=left|width=400|height=430]Brockville would make a fine setting for all kinds of movies. It's something the folks at economic development would do well to promote. But the Brockville-based film being screened at the arts centre on Thursday is not city hall's idea of good community boosting.

Frank civic debate, however, is about real life, not Hollywood.

NCR: Not Criminally Responsible, which premiered Sunday at Toronto's Hot Docs film festival, centres on Brockville Mental Health Centre (BMHC) patient Sean Clifton, who in 1999 attacked 22-year-old Julie Bouvier with a knife at a mall in Cornwall. He now lives in Brockville on a conditional discharge under BMHC supervision.

The arts centre is hosting a free-admission screening of the film, courtesy of the National Film Board and the Royal Ottawa Health Care Group, Thursday at 7:30 p.m.

[img_assist|nid=57|title=City police|desc=|link=none|align=right|width=500|height=333]It's not a revelation that city police officers, rather than blanketing the downtown core in full armour in anticipation of weekend bar fights, will instead ticket brawlers under the nuisance bylaw. City council approved that bylaw two years ago, and fighting was clearly among the offences that couild get one ticketed (up there with blocking traffic and going to the bathroom on the sidewalk).

The idea of ticketing brawlers, rather than rounding them up and throwing them in "the tank" for the night, followed by criminal charges, will strike many as insufficient. We're quickly approaching the fifth anniversary of the May 18, 2008 downtown assault that left Ken Gottfried with permanent physical damage; in many ways, for Brockvillians, there has not been such a thing as an "ordinary" downtown fisticuff since that tragic incident.

[img_assist|nid=53|title=Elm Street foot bridge|desc=Participants in Saturday's Jane's Walk will be invited to stop, think and talk.|link=none|align=right|width=500|height=423]

I came across the work of urban thinker Jane Jacobs long ago, while studying the general idea of "The City" for my postgraduate work in English lit. I'm thrilled to see it's still taking hold, and taking hold in Brockville.

Jacobs, if I recall, had a particular bias toward larger cities. She called Toronto home, after all. But Saturday's Jane's Walk in Brockville demonstrates that, while Jacobs's theories may not always be geared toward small cities like ours, the spirit behind them can be found wherever people gather in an environment that is recognizably urban.

In fact, it is a good thing for any city dweller, big or small, to pause and take note of his or her surroundings. Sometimes, as may be the case with trees and urban wildlife, noticing those surroundings is the first step toward ensuring we do not lose them.

At other times, noting one's surroundings is the first step toward fixing them.

[img_assist|nid=54|title=Baroque and Blue|desc=Michael Morgan peforms Claude Bolling's "Baroque and Blue" during the Stars of the Festival Awards Night show.|link=none|align=right|width=500|height=459]There were plenty of thrilling moments at Tuesday's Stars of the Festival show, but if I had a fedora, I'd tip it right now to flautist Michael Morgan, who brought to festival-goers' attention the under-appreciated genius of the French composer and jazz pianist Claude Bolling.

Sporting a fedora for the occasion, Michael played "Baroque and Blue" a suitable representation of Bolling's fusion of classical and jazz.

It was a joy to hear, even if Morgan and pianist Donna Richards gently excised the raunchier jazz bits, no doubt because they didn't have the luxury of a drummer and stand-up bassist. (You can get the original version, with Bolling and Jean-Pierre Rampal, here.)

One of the more significant details in the most recent story about new jobs in the west-end industrial park  is not the little boo-boo city hall's economic development department committed in projecting Spectrum Brands' future hiring plans, but rather Dave Paul's comment about the acquisition of new industrial lands.

[img_assist|nid=51|title=Music festival|desc=DARCY CHEEK The Recorder and Times Ellie McCann plays "Catch Me" (Anne Crosby) during a Grade 2 Canadian Composers class for the Lions Music Festival at St. John's Uinted Church on Wednesday.|link=none|align=right|width=500|height=387]I may be biased on this one, since I got to skip work this morning and watch my two daughters perform in the Brockville Music Festival. Then there's this afternoon, when my eldest daughter placed first in her category for classical piano.

But spending the day at the Brockville Arts Centre brought on the irresistible urge to rant about the importance of the music festival, which the Brockville Lions Club is putting on for the 62nd year.

It culminates Tuesday night with the Stars of the Festival, and a decent turnout would be a welcome antidote to a continuing decline in participation.

Music Festival committee chairman Norm Kearney said there are about 400 entries, adding the number is in decline because there is less musical instruction in schools.

[img_assist|nid=46|title=Mayor Henderson during OPP debate|desc=|link=none|align=left|width=410|height=273][img_assist|nid=48|title=Jeff Earle spoke in opposition|desc=|link=none|align=right|width=405|height=270]

The next chapter of city council's OPP costing saga will be bureaucratic, involving letters back and forth between the city and provincial government. That will be followed by a lot of behind-the-scenes number crunching and, perhaps, disputes over the validity of the numbers being crunched.

You can probably bet, however, that when the OPP's proposal comes back and the discussion reaches the public meeting stage, there will already be a full lobbying effort to refer any final decision to a referendum in the 2014 municipal election.

The idea of a referendum, urged by Louise Severson in last night's debate, already appears to have some traction on council, although how much remains to be seen.

[img_assist|nid=18|title=OPP costing?|desc=|link=none|align=middle|width=900|height=188]

The hours are counting down to what could be the most significant vote by a Brockville council since the approval of the Tall Ships Landing agreement. It's C-Day, costing day, or what could be the start of a long and bitter cost-analysis for an Ontario Provincial Police service contract.

And right on time for C-Day, supporters of the costing have the opportunity to dig up some old ammunition. Yesterday's police services board meeting offered up a timely reminder of the huge spike in police wages this year.

The city has budgeted for a nine-per-cent increase in wages and benefits, and that's just officials' best estimate of what will come down later this year, since the collective agreement calls for 2013 wages based on the average salary of four comparator police forces.

This is a "catch-up year" in the four-year collective agreement, and the steepness of that catch-up will be an advantage to supporters of a switch to the OPP.

[img_assist|nid=43|title=Black and Decker site|desc=|link=none|align=right|width=400|height=242]

The award for non-sequitur comment of the weekend goes to "the_moment," for: "If you all think a bird should be in the front of your home town paper that is why all the jobs in Brockville are flying south."

Someone please tell me the connection. And besides, our story on the passing of the parrot (which, thankfully, some people "got" and expressed the appropriate sympathy) was not on the front page, but on page three.

One front-page story had to do with jobs that may not be flying south (or east, for that matter).

The sale of the former Black and Decker property is far from a done deal. Court-ordered sales can be even more complicated than ordinary ones, so we'll have to wait until May to find out where this goes.

Anything on that site, be it retail, warehousing or a secret farm for breeding parrots, would be better than what's there now. Camalor needs neighbours.