09 Dec Cape Breton Post editorial takes on Mayor John Morgan
In a rare instance of a local voice taking on Sydney’s popular but incessantly negative mayor, a Cape Breton Post editorial criticized two recent tweets by His Worship: It was typical Morgan stuff:
… there is no evidence that our region can survive under the current governance structure in Nova Scotia
and
It’s not survivable for businesses and it’s not even survivable for families impacted to have that level of taxation burden with less than half the service levels. It is corrosive to the entire community.
In a leader titled “The Eternal Pessimist,” the Post nailed the destructive impact of the mayor’s constant whining:
[T]he picture he’s painting is not only negative, it’s untrue. Many local businesses and families are not only surviving, they’re thriving, despite paying higher taxes and having access to fewer services than residents of the provincial capital.
Morgan calls that putting “a positive spin on what is unfolding.” But it’s not spin, it’s the truth.
Undoubtedly, some businesses and families are struggling. Would it help if more government jobs were located in Cape Breton? Yes. Would it help if the province distributed more equalization money to the municipalities? Arguably, but that would mean less money in the provincial coffers, so something would likely be cut.
What Morgan doesn’t seem to understand — or chooses to ignore — is that a mayor can pursue more equalization money and government jobs without alienating others and without the perpetual public pessimism. His version of equalization fundamentalism might help get him re-elected, but it’s not helping the region. His attitude is “corrosive.”
This is a mayor whose administration has not lured a single job-producing enterprise to Cape Breton, and who squandered at least half a million civic dollars on a doomed legal challenge that never had any hope at success—except the “success” of persuading gullible voters that the mayor was a scrapper in their corner.
Some scrapper. Some corner.