| Sep 24, 2018


Last week’s Addington Highlands Ward 2 all candidates meeting in Flinton will likely go down as one of the shortest such meetings in history with only two questions asked of the five candidates running in the October election.

After the candidates (incumbents Helen Yanch and Bill Cox and newcomer David Miles for councilor as well as incumbent Reeve Henry Hogg and newcomer Alice Madigan) gave their opening statements, one member of the audience asked about a broken swing on the playground at the Flinton Hall.

“We are looking into that,” said Yanch. “But it probably won’t be fixed for awhile.

“My wife likes the swings so it should be fixed,” said Miles.

“There’s a report coming on what all needs to be fixed,” said Hogg. “I hope we can afford to get it all done.”

When it appeared that there were no more questions from the 20 or so people in the audience, The Frontenac News asked the candidates for their views on whether or not they would support a marijuana outlet in the municipality when it become legal Oct. 17 (hey, we came all that way).

(The question turned out to be prophetic as just that evening Hogg had been informed of a legal marijuana grow-op consisting of about 800 plants just outside of Flinton. Hogg said later that Health Canada is supposed to inform the municipality of such operations “but they didn’t in this case. The land is zoned agricultural and we’ll probably have to re-zone it to industrial so we can collect the taxes.”)

Here’s the candidates’ responses at the meeting.

“I doubt that there will be any requests,” said Hogg. “I know there are some legal grow ops we didn’t know about.”

“It’s hard to see these things readily available in the area,” said Miles. “I’ve had friends use it for medicinal purposes (but) it’s sad when economics dictates our morality.”

“I’m not really for it but I’m not for alcohol either,” said Madigan. “But if it’s what our residents want . . .”

“I don’t think there will be too may dispensaries in our area,” said Cox. “We’ll know better once they tell us the rules.”

“That’s very difficult to answer,” said Yanch. “You’ll be able to buy it online and there’s already medicinal marijuana available online.

“We already have drugs in the community so if somebody had a storefront that was legal and protected, we could benefit from tax revenue and while personally I don’t want to see shops, but at least we would have some control.”

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