Central Frontenac Council opted to go with entrance stairs over ceiling insulation at Oso Hall at its regular meeting Tuesday evening in Sharbot Lake. Manager of Development Services and CBO Shawn Merriman told Council that there is no foundation under the steps leading to Oso Hall and as such “the cost will be much higher than we budgeted for.” Merriman said that they could take funds budgeted for insulation in the ceiling or look at a temporary solution for the stairs. “My recommendation is to fix the stairs properly and we’re looking at $20,000 for that,” he said. “We might even be able to do some of the ceiling.” “If we don’t insulate the ceiling, will we be losing money from heating the hall?” said…

Essentially, the first-ever GREC Expo held at the education centre in Sharbot Lake Tuesday was an opportunity for elementary students to see what the secondary students do in the arts through a series of workshops. And it was also an opportunity for the secondary students to “show off” a bit and since family members were also invited, maybe even sell some of their artwork as well. “It’s designed to be participatory,” said art teacher Valerie Allan, one of the organizers. To that end, primary students got to participate in workshops for ceramics, music, journaling, slam poetry (a competition of spoken word poetry) and even a drop-in centre for board games. And for those that weren’t that interested in artistic pursuits, there was a field trip…

Since 2004, students at the Granite Ridge Education Centre have been involved with the Student Vote Committee and while the majority of the audience weren’t old enough to vote during last Thursday’s all-candidates debate, the candidates themselves were taking the exercise seriously. There was also a sizable contingency from the North Addington Education Centre in attendance. Green Party candidate Anita Payne was the first to speak and in her opening statements linked what she called a “Lyme disease epidemic” to climate change. After acknowledging that this event was happening on unceded Algonquin territory, Liberal candidate Amanda Pulker-Mok said her priorities were health care, both from an administration and a user-standpoint as well as expanded cell phone and broadband service. After pointing out that he has…

Fire Chief/Manager of Emergency Services Greg Robinson presented his Phase Two Organizational and Operational Review, a lengthy document containing 142 “gaps” or problems with the Central Frontenac Fire Department at Council’s regular meeting Tuesday in Mountain Grove. Given the length of the documents, there wasn’t a lot of discussion but Robinson suggested that it was being presented now to give Council a chance to read it before a discussion scheduled for the June 26 Council meeting and several other presentations from the review over the next three months. “Any fire chief that would give me this much reading before a long weekend . . . I don’t know,” said Coun. Bill MacDonald. “With documents of this magnitude, I think it’s important that we take our…

Stephen Gebhardt is a blue-green libertarian. He lives the lifestyle any Green Party member would envy in a rural off-grid house on 100 acres south of Arden with his wife and two children. They make their own power with wind turbines and solar panels, and get their own wood to heat the house off of the rural property. But Gebhardt also works in resource extraction as an airborne geophysicist, spending two months at time flying over landscapes around the world conducting research for private and public sector interests. And he was a long time Conservative party supporter until becoming disillusioned after the fiscal collapse of 2008. His interest politics has never waned and he has drifted over to the Ontario Libertarian party, which is for…