Tuesday, June 24, 2014

REDEKOP'S IN; MARTIN OUT

No big surprise. It has been rumoured for months that former Fort Erie mayor Wayne Redekop was going to return to local politics for an encore performance. And Doug Martin has announced that he will not seek re-election.

It's fun to read through Martin's Retirement Press Release to see all his great "accomplishments" over the past thirty or so years.  He is so proud that he was able to remove the reliance on slot revenues even though it caused a substantial tax increase. He also brags about removing the funding from gaming revenue for the EDTC.  Yeah, now they're just dipping into the reserve fund to fund the race track now that slots are gone.  That reserve fund has grown due to the efforts of staff and council to curb spending. It was this council that kept the tax hike to the lowest in several years, all the while building up the reserve fund to over a million dollars.

He talks about the polarization on council beginning in the latter part of his first term. Funny, that was when the whole Bay Beach Saga began and the threat of losing public beachfront property to a high rise developer sent many citizens into overdrive.  He talks about social media and blogs where people can hide behind pseudonyms and lies. Who could he be talking about? Me? I put my name out there from the beginning and I was sued with taxpayer money by Jim Thibert. He also tried to sue Google to get the identity of a person who commented on my blog anonymously for fear of losing her job.  Meanwhile, the mayor's own fanboys have a blog and they all use aliases, yet everyone knows who they are anyways because it is always easy to pick out the "tells" of poorly written rants on their blog.

So, Martin is riding off into the sunset with an empty saddlebag. Don't worry though. He'll be fine. He had thirty years at the trough and he took extra portions and stashed them away for his golden years.  Integrity? Yeah, that is a laugh since he was behind the lawsuit against four councillors who elected by a lot more than he got.

Happy Trails to you, Dougie.

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