The President’s Message
By Judith Grant
In 2003, the year of the last municipal election, our association, FoTTSA, posted an announcement on The Tiny Cottager website and Tiny’s Residents Working Together printed the same announcement in the Labour Day issue of Tiny Ties. It read –
A True Community in Tiny
The Federation of Tiny Township Shoreline Associations and Tiny’s Residents Working Together both want a true community in Tiny – one which includes farmers, cottagers, villagers. This is an
election year and we agree that dialogue and
government which serves all of Tiny Township are essential to a successful and unified Township.
Our two Associations are working together to achieve that end.
It was the first public indication that our two associations had been working together on that fall’s municipal election in Tiny.
That cooperative effort made us fully aware of the similarity of our views on many issues. In the years since 2003, our associations have continued to keep in touch. On occasion we made joint or parallel presentations to Council on matters of common concern such as the need for High Speed Internet, the looming problem of septage disposal, and the need to urge Council to reject the recreational trailer park and campground proposed for Concession 2.
This year, we decided to work on the election together, once again, initially by posting notices urging potential candidates to contact us, and then by interviewing those who came forward.
At first, there was an interview team of four – the Chairman of TRWT (George Lawrence) and the President of the Federation (Judith Grant), plus one additional person from each board. This team interviewed seven people. At that point, George Lawrence announced that he was considering running himself. In due course his decision firmed up, he resigned as Chair of TRWT, and did not attend the final interview session, which included a review of all the options and a tentative drawing up of lists. The two boards (with TRWT under the leadership of Bob Miskimins) discussed the various options.
As in 2003, we were quite prepared to discover that we could agree on only two or three candidates, but once again we agreed on five.
In making our choices we took into account many factors. For the Mayor and Deputy Mayor slots we thought prior experience on Council was important – but when that was not available at the Deputy Mayor level, we looked for broad knowledge of the township and its problems. Beyond that, we were looking for people who have meaningful experience of one part or another of the Township, or who had useful skills– experience in administration, ability to work as part of a team, capacity to analyze budgets and to address difficult problems, willingness to ask questions, special sorts of knowledge.
In the end, we decided to recommend —
Peggy Breckenridge for Mayor
George Lawrence for Deputy Mayor
André Claire for Councillor
George Cornell for Councillor
Nigel Warren for Councillor
Among them, these five have had many years of experience in Tiny. Together they have an impressive range of skills. They are fully aware of the commitment they are taking on. They all love Tiny and want to serve all parts of the community fairly. Together they have the ingredients for a good, balanced, effective Council.
