Once every 4 years we have an election, and it’s coming up on 2 November 2025. I am running for Mayor of Wentworth in this election. To be a voter you don’t have to live here full-time. If you own, or co-own, or lease a cottage, you’re eligible to vote.
Further down I put some biographical information. It’s not there so you vote for me personally. I include it only to establish credibility in discussing science-related issues. In fact, if the current Mayor or any other reasonable candidate would fight for these same policies, I wouldn’t even run. I don’t actually want the job, but I do want the policies.
1. TRANSPARENCY
The Current Administration does not believe in TRANSPARENCY. When the current Mayor took office every council meeting was recorded, and the recording was kept available on the municipal website. However, the Mayor ELIMINATED the audio recordings. Following the example of many other municipalities, I will LIVESTREAM council meetings so you can watch from the comfort of your own home.
2. MINOR DEROGATIONS
Minor derogations can allow your neighbour to break the law and build their house too close to your property line. Unlike how it’s done in many other municipalities, the neighbour WHOSE RIGHTS ARE BEING STOLEN has no idea it’s happening. As mayor I’d make it mandatory for the affected neighbour to be notified in advance. They wouldn’t get a veto, but would have the right to present their case against the derogation.
3. MONEY MONEY MONEY
Before this Mayor took office, the Wentworth budget was about $1 million per year. Now it’s ballooned to over $3 MILLION per year. I promise to fight to REDUCE the budget by 5% per year for every year of my 4-year term. This would amount to a saving of around 20% instead of a budget that would have increased by maybe $100 thousand/year. Doing the math: 20% X $3 million = $600,000 + 4 X $100 thousand = $1 million less. If we divide this by the 800 properties in Wentworth =
$1,250 each one of you saves!
(It’s worth knowing I’ve been a business owner for 40 years responsible for spending every penny myself. There’s a big difference between people on salary and business owners. It takes business experience to run the Municipal Corporation of Wentworth.)
4. TOO MANY BY-LAWS
I promise that for every new by-law passed, at least one old by-law will be ELIMINATED. We have too many stale laws clogging up the books. There are also some environmental laws with NO scientific merit that REDUCE THE ENJOYMENT of our properties. In fact, some of these restrictions have even been characterized by the Quebec Federation of Municipalities as “DISGUISED EXPROPRIATIONS”
5. INSANE LAWS
According to Wentworth By-Law 2024-002, if you break environmental regulations, you can be fined $2,000/day for as many days as they deem the regulation was not followed. For instance, if you’re gone for the Winter and let it lapse, they could hit you for 8 months (let’s say 250 days), and then you could be fined $500 THOUSAND. I would PUT A REASONABLE MAXIMUM on any type of financial penalty.
– Science Editor for the McGill University administration newspaper McGill Reporter.
– Science Information Officer for the United Nations (UNITAR) energy conference.
– Science & Medicine broadcaster for CBC & CBC International Service.
– Associate Editor of Montreal Star in charge of Editorials and Op-Eds about science.
– A few published original Science Journal articles like THIS & THIS.
– Occasional pop-science articles like THIS ONE for the Sunday Guardian Live.
6. THE LIFE & DEATH OF LAKES
Believe it or not, all lakes have natural lifetimes. If you take an immortality pill and live 10,000 years, Louisa won’t be nearly as nice as today. What will eventually kill our lakes is over-nutrition from leaves and decomposing branches and trees. Studies have shown that shoreline shrubs and bushes prevent erosion just as well as trees, without producing so much extra decomposing biomass. We should be aware that our shoreline by-laws are aesthetic preferences and NOT environmental ones. We may want to leave things as they are, but we should have an open and honest discussion about it.
7. CRIBS
Cribs are what are used to hold up all our docks and boathouses. They are square log structures about the size of a kitchen table filled with heavy rocks. The cribs are massive enough not to get pushed around by ice in Winter. Some idiot in the Quebec government made them illegal. Cribs are ALLOWED IN ONTARIO LAKES, and recommended by the USA EPA. Using the Freedom of Information Act I pried a letter out of the Quebec government admitting they have NO SCIENTIFIC SUPPORT WHATSOEVER for the law. MY ARTICLE at WentworthGazette.com has been read over ten thousand times. If I become Mayor there will be NO ENFORCEMENT OF THIS BAD LAW. You will be able to build and/or repair cribs and I will take personal responsibility. In fact, I’d like them to come after me so this bad law gets changed once and for all.
8. INVASIVE SPECIES
No scary threats about “invasive” species. The LATEST STUDY I could find on Eurasian watermilfoil concludes that maybe they’re finding more because they’re looking more, and THERE MAY NOT BE ANY INVASION WHATSOEVER. In fact, the former Mayor who first started locking the gate at the landing, and introduced the law about boat-washing, told me the secret reason was to create obstacles for the deplorables who can’t afford to buy on the lake, and want only to bring their party boats and stay out on the water. In other words, the “invasive species” they’re really trying to keep out is not “Eurasian watermilfoil” but “impecunious homo sapiens”.
Maybe we want to retain those obstacles, but let’s not inadvertently aggrandize any environmental significance.
9. AS MAYOR I PROMISE TO RELEASE ALL EPSTEIN FILES IN WENTWORTH CITY HALL
TO LEARN …
HOW TO REGISTER TO VOTE
HOW TO VOTE BY MAIL
FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT:
INFO@WENTWORTH.CA