By Pepper Parr
December 1, 2014
BURLINGTON, ON.
Sign at the western gateway to the city.
With the chain of office officially his for the next four years Mayor Rick Golding can settle in and make Burlington a better place.
One of the first things that he did as Mayor for the 2014-18 term was get his picture taken in front of spanking new sign telling traveler’s they are about to enter the village of Aldershot.
Later today the Mayor will give his Inaugural address and possibly even give us a peek at his thinking for the next four years.
The guy on the left, Mayor Goldring, invited the guy on the right, Ron Foxcroft, to give the keynote speech at the guy on the right’s Inaugural event. The guy on the right is funnier than the guy on the left.
Mayor Goldring managed to let himself get upstaged by Ron Foxcroft who will deliver the Keynote address – there will be at least one joke at the Mayor’s expense.
On Thursday the Mayor will glad hand with those invited to a fund raiser to pay off his election campaign debt. Goldring fully expected the 2014 election to be a cake walk; there wasn’t a challenger on the horizon other than Anne Marsden who has run frequently in the past.
Council will begin to take care of business on the 15th when the Standing Committees meet.
Goldring had a campaign team which amounted to a collection of names; no one expected to have to do anything. Then out of the blue came Peter Rusin who did very poorly in the vote count but did manage to keep the Mayor on his toes for a couple of weeks.
Fund raising for Mayoral races usually gets done well before the election. If funds have to be raised after the election it is usually because there was a very hard fought race. That certainly wasn’t the case this time around – did the Mayor get caught flat footed on this one?
Expect anyone who thinks they can curry a little favour with the Mayor to happily accept an invitation to this event. The Gazette wasn’t invited.
Photo ops and glad handing????? Clearly, Pepper was not in Burlington during Cam Jackson’s regime..lol
Perhaps if the Gazette had been less biased in which candidate it supported it might have been invited.
Rusin was no where near qualified to be mayor. His negativity without any solutions may have damaged his chances. The Gazette did hint at this weakness but was much firmer in its criticism of Goldring. The citizens disagreed with the Gazette’s position.
I do think that all media, including the Gazette should have been invited.