This Morning

I just sent a reply-all e-mail to council which took an hour and a half to write.

E-mail is a great opportunity to fill council in on background of various issues without monopolising time at Council meetings. Not that we've had many.

We are having our first general commiittee meeting to-night. I've read the reports,
Now I have to read them again and mark up the parts I need to question.

The Chief Administrator approved several hundred thousands of contracts during
Council's "recess" between elections. I don't know what the word "recess" means in the context of a council. I have never known a staff to have authority to approve contracts over a certain figure.

In the atmosphere around the town hall these days, if staff are challenged by an elected representative, a suit for defamation could result, a complaint could be made under the town's anti harassment policy or filed under the Code of Conduct
or all three.

The occupational hazards of municipal politics have never been thus.

Staff are being asked to examine the Code of Ethics and the Code of Conduct and advise councillors how to conduct ourselves in office.

Any way, it's eleven o'clock , I haven't had breakfast. I have some phone calls to return and e-mails to acknowledge.

I just read a snippet in the Toronto Star about bottles of Scotch being buried in the ice under Antartica for a hundred years. It was still sloshing in the bottles when they dug it up.

I'll get back to you to-morrow...or maybe sooner.