MECAC STUNG BY PUBLIC INPUT, WOOLWICH OBSERVER IGNORE SAME

Monday morning, as I have already posted here, MECAC took a thumping from involved Woolwich citizens. While perhaps Rich Clausi and I hit them the hardest, Lisa MacDonald, on behalf of Dr. Dan Holt did considerable damage to their image and reputation as well. Dr. Dan was attending a medical procedure but provided Lisa with a written document asserting that MECAC have been usurping the courts authority by refusing to send cases along to the courts for their review and possible charges. A fourth citizen also spoke although she referred in more general terms to issues such as everyone needs to follow the rules (election act).

CKCO-TV, K-W Record and the Observer all attended on Monday in Woolwich Council Chambers. The K-W Record also attended yesterday at Provincial Offences Court where I chatted with reporter Paige Desmond. She has another article in today's paper. I have also been advised this morning by the Woolwich Observer that they had a reporter present in court yesterday.

Today's front page article in the Observer is best described as yellow journalism. Steve Kannon quotes five MECAC members' critical comments towards myself but zero of the comments from the previous four involved citizens. As I said: yellow journalism. I am very disappointed in Steve Kannon especially as I have expressed my respect for his overall stand regarding both past and present Woolwich councils as well as his world view of politics, corruption etc..Many of MECAC's comments are just outrageous especially the ones dealing with "minor mistakes". Any suggestion that Mayor Shantz's mistakes were minor in her original filing for the March 27/15 deadline only come from biased and or incompetent persons. She fudged both the Income (Donations) and the Expense side of her Financial Statements by thousands of dollars in order to keep her totals below the magic $10,000 threshold requiring an audit. Anybody can look at the Woolwich Township website under municipal election 2014 and read these numbers for themselves. Those errors are serious but many more have since been discovered, some serious, some less so. All are legal contraventions and I give the K-W Record credit in that they carefully include in each of their articles the ones that Mayor Shantz has admitted to so far.

My hope and expectation is that MECAC will be publicly humiliated via the Provincial Offences Court process. Yes to date the prosecuter has not seriously reviewed the case and decided whether or not the Crown wish to carry it forward or not. Regardless MECAC gave the mayor a clean slate back on July 2/15 only to have her removed from office six days later courtesy of the Municipal Elections Act (MEA). Contrary to Paige Desmond's statement in today's Record she was not removed for admitting her contraventions plural but for one MAJOR contravention namely failing to file an audit. That is an automatic forfeiture and yours truly had to pressure the Woolwich Clerk in order to get her to do her duty, namely issuing the Notice of Breach which precedes the removal from office.

If these charges go forward, the Mayor already has either implicitly or tacitly admitted to about six of them. They have all been listed here in the Advocate previously. These are serious and the Woolwich Observer are doing the public no service by pretending otherwise. While nothing is guaranteed it is quite possible that both MECAC and the Observer may be dining on crow down the road.