Tuesday 26 January 2016

The end of an Era?

With news of layoffs, printing press shutdowns, and publications ending, it has been a tough week for the newspaper industry.

Earlier, Metroland Media announced the early retirement of Ian Proudfoot. This move likely signals significant changes for Newmarket as well.  Could we be seeing the final days of local newspapers in our town?  Newmarket has had its own newspaper publications dating back to the 1850's.

The yorkregion.com web page reportedly attracts 500,000 hits per month.  Could this pan-York Region model replace the local newspapers?  Will we see the Newmarket Era, Aurora Banner, East Gwillimbury Express, Stouffville Sun-Tribune, Markham Economist & Sun, King Connection, Georgina Advocate, Richmond Hill Liberal and Vaughan Citizen being replaced by one single newspaper covering all of York Region?

That is the route Post Media has taken in Ottawa when it amalgamated the newsrooms of the Ottawa Sun and Ottawa Citizen cutting jobs in the process.

Based on current events, its likely that we won't see is the free paper being replaced by paid subscription.  Yesterday, Metroland Media announced that it was ending the paper publication of the Guelph Mercury (which is a paid subscription newspaper) but the Guelph Tribune, a free delivery paper would continue to print.

Back in April 2015 at the Newmarket Public Library's Idea Market forum, Newmarket Era editor Tracy Kibble called out my Newmarket Town Hall Watch and my brand of citizen journalism.  It was a brash move considering that my blog will likely outlast her publication.

Maybe after all the dust settles, Tracy Kibble can start her own blog to compete with Newmarket Town Hall Watch?  Personally I doubt it.  Tracy Kibble's brand of journalism is a paid job.  For citizen journalists like me, writing is our passion.  And for the reader, it is easy to tell the difference between the two.  

Wednesday 20 January 2016

Why Tony Van Bynen shovels public money into the Newmarket Era

Why is Mayor Tony Van Bynen so obsessed with controlling what information gets released to the public?

Back in the dying days of the 2014 municipal election, Tony Van Bynen and his allies went apoplectic when a secret Glenway memo was released to the public. He decried the "breach of confidentiality" condemning it in the strongest of terms.

All of it was nonsense of course. There was no breach because the secret memo was distributed after council voted to make the document public. The only reason Van Bynen was upset was because he couldn't put his spin on the memo. The memo was released in its pure, unvarnished form and it revealed to Glenway residents important information that the Mayor didn't want them to know.

So it is of no surprise that the upcoming Code of Conduct revisions is equally obsessed with so-called "confidentiality" matters. Namely, unless the information is made public by approved methods, Councillors are bound to keep quiet.

It's a nice way for Tony Van Bynen to sit on information until his spin-masters in the ever growing "Communications Department" have polished and massaged the details that the public is entitled to know.

Earlier in Council this week, we saw how Tony Van Bynen reacts to facts. When confronted about his salary, which apparently Freedom of Information reports reveal to be substantially higher than the $151,000 he told the Editor of the Era, he says, "I don't think your facts are correct."

Van Bynen could end the controversy by making his tax filing public for the 2014. He chooses not to. Instead, he lives in the grey, murky world of half truths and obfuscation, hoping that residents will get lost in the fog.

Keep in mind the Mayor's stranglehold over what stories the Newmarket Era publishes (certainly never a disparaging word - ever - regarding Mayor Van Bynen. Miraculously, the Era has agreed with 100% of what Van Bynen does for more than a decade).

Here are some extremely relevant stories that the Era has ignored in the past year:

1)  The Mayor's salary fiasco.

2)  Deputy Mayor John Taylor keeping secret the fact that his wife is a senior executive of the media group which owns the Era. Not only did he keep it secret, he voted to advertise "announcements" in her paper on many, many occasions without ever declaring a conflict of interest.

3) The paper wrote about campaign compliance audits in other municipalities but did not cover the regional councillor John Taylor's (even though he was made to return a fat cheque to a company owned by billionaire Frank Stronach).

4) A lawsuit alleging that Steve Hinder, Stronach's bag man and the debate moderator in the 2014 election, punched a man at a political event, resulting in the victim spending months in the hospital recovering.

5)  Councillor Tom Vegh living la vida loca on the taxpayer dime via his discretionary expense account.

Each one of these topics are big news even in a small town like Newmarket. Could you imagine the furor if someone like Rob Ford were to be embroiled in anything similar? It wouldn't just be making headlines in Toronto, but across the nation.

But in Newmarket, due to the cowardice of  Era publisher and editor, Ian Proudfoot and Tracy Kibble, too afraid of the Montgomery Burns character we have as our mayor, cower at the feet of Tony Van Bynen. They call themselves a "community paper" but the Era has long given up serving the community. The Era serves just one master.



In an era when Canadian newspapers are closing their doors and laying off staff, the Newmarket Era is one paper that deserves to be shut down for being a propaganda rag that only publishes state-sanctioned talking points pre-approved by Tony Van Bynen and his stooges.

Thursday 14 January 2016

2016 Budget: Let's Talk Taxes

These aren't my words.

Mayor Van Bynen wrote the "2016 Budget: Let's Talk Taxes" as the title to a blog post on his website. That post was published on October 24, 2015.

OK Mr. Mayor - we're listening. Do you have anything to say?  Anything at all?

In this week's Committee of the Whole meeting, the Operational and Capital Budgets were passed in approximately an hour. Oddly, there were very few questions posed by Council members to the Treasurer. There were many instances of back slapping and self congratulations though.

Many among the nine people elected to serve as the watchdogs of the public purse remained stone-faced silent during the entire exercise.

At this upcoming Monday's Council meeting, the budget will be ratified.  Like they've done for the past 10 years (as they have each and every year since Van Bynen has been elected Mayor), your property taxes will rise at a rate well above the cost of living.

I doubt that the debate will be any more vigorous on Monday than what we have seen thus far.

As opposed to the heated yet important debates we had seen between 2010 and 2014, when former councillor Maddie Di Muccio would push for cost cutting measures each year to balance the books, (ultimately she would vote against the tax hike), the past two years of budget talks have been rubber stamping of whatever goodies the bureaucrats demanded.

We still won't have plowed sidewalks that were promised. We won't have any service enhancements, such as Monday Library openings or investments into job creation measures.

What we haven't seen is any council member Tweet, Facebook post, or blog anything supportive about the budget in 2016.

When even the Councillors of the Town of Newmarket can't find anything good to say about the 2016 Budget, then what should the rest of us think about it?

And if they can't find any reason to promote the Budget, then why are they voting in favour of it?

Doesn't the Councillors' silence speak volumes?

It's your 2016 Budget,  Why aren't the Council members talking about it?