ron's blog

In journalism school, my profs used to call it a "Holy Sh** Edna" story. As in your typcial middle-aged reader picking up the paper and yelling: "Holy sh**, Edna, look at this!"

Of the many photos I took at last Thursday night's Brockville and Area Music and Performing Arts Hall of Fame gala, I am fondest of this one.

Consider for a moment everything this photo says about Brockville.

In years gone by, the good old R&T would always follow up a good Lirpa Loof story with a retraction, clarification or other print journalism equivalent of "Juuuust kidding, folks!"

I would not presume to borrow the venerable prankster's name without respecting tradition, and so, to be precise, the preceding blog entry about a planned underwater condo complex was nothing more than Lirpa Loof spelled backwards.

While we're at it, a tip of the hat to my university professors of days done by, without whom I would not have known that "Nekulturny" is the Russian word for an uncultured person, and "Duraky" is the plural of "Durak," which means "Idiot." For making this post possible, "Spaciba!"

Finally, even without the Lirpa Loof reference, the folks at city hall would have been able to point out the flaw in my description of the photo, in which "planner Jonathan Faurschou is pointing to Brockville's sewage intake."

In fact, there is no sewage intake. Sewage goes out to the river, while the intake takes in water for the water treatment plant.

[img_assist|nid=23|title=Secret meeting|desc=Planner Jonathan Faurschou points to the location of a planned underwater condominium complex in Brockville waters.|link=none|align=middle|width=600|height=446]

It seems all this talk about waterfront development may soon become irrelevant. Brockville's real future is underwater.

Sources at city hall sent me this picture from a closed-door meeting held at 6 a.m. today, timed to fit the schedule of a Moscow developer aiming to build an underwater condominium complex in the St. Lawrence River.

According to my source, who shall remain nameless, the lengthy Skype dicsussion involved Mayor David Henderson and one of the business contacts he made while on a trip to Russia last fall, a wealthy but reclusive Moscow developer named Boris Nekulturny.

(Just as an aside, Nekulturny and his condominium development company, Duraky Kondom, have nothing to do with the good folks Henderson met in the Zabaikalsky region of Siberia. Rather, this contact was established, at Nekulturny's request, during a stopover in Moscow.)

To start the long weekend off on a note of laughter, here's a bit of levity from the city council table. I invite you to imagine word bubbles for this photo of our elected officials deep in debate. Here is my suggestion:

BEATTY: "I've covered the Timmy's run for the last three times! Don't you think it's someone else's turn?"

EARLE (thought bubble): "Yeah, I guess the guy's got a point there."

It wouldn't be a public sector salary disclosure story without the odd nasty comment about the amount police officers and firefighters earn. And as my colleague Alanah Duffy reports in her piece on the most recent Brockville Sunshine List, there are, yet again, plenty of police officers and firefighters on this year's list.

I will never tire of Councillor Jeff Earle's predilection for colourful metaphors.

During Tuesday night's debate on the railway tunnel motion, Earle, who cast the lone "No" vote, conveyed his frustration at what he considers a lack of information this way:

“Essentially, I'm buying a pig in a blanket. I just don't want it to turn out to be a porcupine."

Say what you want about the councillor or his position, this is one prickly turn of phrase. One assumes he was referring to the proverbial pig in a poke, a metaphor for getting swindled, as opposed to a pig in a blanket, one of those mouthwatering sausage-in-a-pastry things I now desperately yearn to ingest, with mustard, as a bedtime snack.

Instead of allowing a flawed metaphor to fall flat, Earle took the pig in a blanket (something desirable, unless you're a health food nut) and conveyed his true meaning by morhphing the pig into a porcupine. As far as he's concerned, the railway tunnel, like the sausage, is a good thing, but he's worried that, having bought it, the sausage will turn into a porcupine.

[img_assist|nid=15|title=Budget binder|desc=|link=node|align=right|width=500|height=213]

A motion to continue giving city councilliors a tax break on a third of their pay is on the consent agenda for tonight's regular meeting, meaning it's likely to pass without discussion.

The Municipal Act lets councillors get a third of their base pay tax-free by declaring it as compensation for "expenses incident to the discharge" of council duties. It's been a longstanding city policy to have the tax break, since that same remuneration policy bars councillors from claiming a host of incidental expenses, not least of which is in-town travel.

It sounds like a sweet deal for anyone to get a third of one's salary tax-free, but, to be honest, I'm of two minds about this one. Given the way gas prices go up and down, and all the expenses a councillor could theoretically claim as incidental if he or she were allowed, I'm not convinced taxpayers aren't getting a better deal this way.

[img_assist|nid=13|title=Water tower|desc=|link=node|align=left|width=301|height=204]If anyone is looking for reasons to question the latest MoneySense ranking of "Canada's Best Places to Live," and Brockville's place in it (we're 111th), the best one may come from one of the good-news numbers.

MoneySense senior editor David Hodges said the most significant number driving the Brockville area's increase is an improvement in population growth, where the area has jumped from minus-1.6 per cent to plus-5.21.

This sounds like good news of the too-good-to-be-true variety.

Population growth of 5.21 per cent? Seriously? Considering Mayor David Henderson and others regularly bemoan the fact our population growth barely makes a blip in the economic EKG? Someone must have got out the demographic defibrillator.

Dave Paul is right to raise his eyebrows at that growth figure, although he, like other city officials, will take the good news when it comes.

There's a wealth of material I couldn't include in today's story about the railway tunnel project, for reasons of economy, including an interesting quote from Councillor Jeff Earle.