Time for Change, Real Change

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When I moved here in 2005 I found Millbrook to be the perfect place to spend my retirement years; a picturesque village nestled in the idyllic, rolling hills of Cavan Monaghan, with none of the cares of the fast-paced world around us. It turns out the setting is indeed idyllic, but regretfully our local politics are in need of a dramatic overhaul.
It is hard to imagine the litany of questionable decisions arrived at by the present Cavan Monaghan municipal council these past four years. Let’s start with the unsettling event of two years ago when Council initially agreed to let the electorate decide on a new name change for the municipality, only to later ignore our suggestions and impose the new name autocratically. Even our Millbrook Councilor, who should represent her constituents’ wishes, voted to remove Millbrook from the municipality’s name.
Next, and more importantly, is the issue of the Fraserville Secondary Plan (2005) and specifically the Official Plan Amendment No. 6 (June 2009). This amendment ignores the 2006 Fraserville-North Monaghan Servicing Study that called for a new municipal well on the south side of Moore Drive, with a water treatment plant and reservoir to be located on the north side of Moore Drive. The amendment concludes that the original preferred well site has proven to be possibly contaminated; therefore it concludes that the most appropriate option is to use water from the Millbrook wells and extend a water main from Millbrook to Fraserville, a distance of over 12 kilometres. Queries to the Municipality about just how the original well site is contaminated have been brushed aside by the Municipality under the guise of privacy concerns and even requests made under the Freedom of Information Act are being completely ignored.
This is the third letter in six months that I have written to the Millbrook Times about the Fraserville Secondary Plan. In my August 1st letter I raised the water supply issue of why the Cavan Monaghan Council is proceeding with only peripheral input from the constituents. The September 8th letter raised the issue of possible conflict of interest by North Monaghan Councilor Brian Bartlett, when he acknowledged at the August 4th Fraserville Secondary Plan Public Meeting that he owned property within the area of the plan.
Both of these issues remain unresolved as we head into 2010. The council is proceeding full steam ahead with their plan to source water for Fraserville from the Millbrook wells, regardless of overwhelming objections from over 1000 concerned township residents. What has been Councilor Bartlett’s response to his possible conflict of interest? No comment, no explanation; nothing to explain to his constituents why he continues to sit in council meetings when the Fraserville project is on the agenda. Does he feel it unnecessary to adhere to tenets of the Municipal Conflict of Interest Act?
While we are on the subject of conflict of interest, at the September 9th Public Open House on the Fraserville Water Supply Master Plan Review, we were asked if we had any questions regarding the Master Plan. My question was: “Given that one of our councilors may be in a conflict of interest situation over the Fraserville development, have any of the members of council ever sold any land to any developers, not just in the Fraserville Secondary Plan Area, but anywhere in the Municipality of Cavan-Monaghan? If so, was a conflict declared at that time?”
To date I have not received a satisfactory answer to that question from the municipality. In the meantime, since making that request, I was apprised by another concerned township resident of another possible conflict of interest matter, this time by our reeve, Neal Cathcart. Examination at the land registry office in Peterborough reveals that on Dec. 16, 2005 Reeve Cathcart and his mother severed a 1 acre building lot from a 100 acre parcel they jointly owned on Concession 10 and it was transferred to his mother on Dec. 20 for the sum of $2.00. Two days later, on Dec. 22, they transferred the remaining 99 acres to Towerhill Developments Inc. for $400,000. A final transaction in the file on that same day shows a charge of $250,000 from Towerhill Developments to the Cathcarts, leaving one to conclude that perhaps this matter deserves further investigation. Not being familiar with vacant land values in the municipality, I leave the appropriateness of the sale amount to others in the real estate/farming community to comment on. In any event, even if the sale itself did not constitute a conflict of interest, given his position as an elected representative, shouldn’t Reeve Cathcart have disclosed this transaction? Wouldn’t the voters in Cavan Monaghan have been interested in knowing this at the time? Would knowledge of this transaction have had any effect on his re-election as reeve in the 2006 elections? Should he choose to run for office again this October, will these same voters accept this transaction as appropriate behaviour by their reeve?
All the electorate of Cavan Monaghan wants is transparency of governance. In these trying days, anything less is unacceptable.

2009, in particular, has seen our council get more and more involved in inept, controversial decisions that will have an economic impact for many years to come. These are austere times, with unemployment at record highs and burgeoning government deficits at all levels. This is not the time for dubious development plans that could possibly bankrupt our municipality with a crushing debt load. Need another example of reckless government expenditure? There was no public input allowed at the November 2 council meeting where Genivar Consulting presented its multi-million dollar proposal to widen Hwy. #28 to a divided four-lane expressway from Hwy. #115 to Syer Line. Just who will benefit from this latest 2 kilometre ‘highway-to-nowhere’ extravaganza? Without exception, all of the council voted in favour of the proposal, adding one more nail-in-the coffin to what is becoming locally known as ‘the Fraserville fiasco’.
It is time to replace all of the council with more qualified, more approachable, more responsible representatives in this coming October municipal election. This is the time for concerned citizens of our municipality to step forward, declare their candidacy and give us the opportunity to select a new council that will listen to the will of the people.
Time for change, real change.
Lyell Shields