By Stephen Vance, Editor
Dear Santa,
I know it is early but since you will be in Meaford on Saturday to kick off the annual Christmas Window Unveiling event, I thought I would prepare a wish list for you so that you could take it with you when you leave.
It was really hard to narrow down my list this year. I don’t want to seem greedy, and really I don’t want much this year, but some of what I am hoping to get will take a lot of work, so you might find the extra time helpful.
Anyway, here is my wish list:
-
Our council recently passed a resolution supporting a moratorium on wind farm development in Meaford. Is there any chance that we could also get a moratorium on future lawsuits?
-
Not long after the Scarecrow Invasion ended the recycle bins on the main street were taken away to be stored for the winter, leaving only garbage cans for people to discard their waste. Meaford has stated that we want to be a green community, but are we only to be a seasonal green community? Could you ask our new council to find a way to have year-round receptacles for recycleable items in our downtown, and at all municipally managed facilities?
-
Could we please, please, please see the audited financial statements for 2009 sometime before our new council has to start debating the budget for next year?
-
I would really like to get one of those cool Integrity Commissioner action figures because apparently we aren’t allowed to have the real thing in Meaford anymore.
-
If it is possible to receive two action figures, I would also like a By-Law Enforcement Officer action figure because Wednesdays just aren’t convenient for me to find our one day per week Enforcement Officer.
-
I would love it if you could arrange for our curbside compost pick-up to be extended to ALL tax-paying residents in our wonderful community.
-
I know that your sleigh isn’t affected, but many of our roads are a mess, especially some of our rural roads. Could you drop a load of asphalt at the operations centre?
-
Meaford Hall has had a banner year with 9 sellouts so far. While that is fabulous, there are 365 days in a year, so any chance you could deliver another 43 sellouts so that we could at least have one per week?
-
Lastly, and I know that this should be a given, and should already have been taken care of, but what I would like most this holiday season is to ensure that our historic buildings are preserved. These buildings are as important to the image and character of Meaford as the skyscraper skyline is to places like New York. Any chance you can make sure that our new council doesn’t drop the ball on this?
I know this is a pretty big list Santa, but I have been a really good boy this year, and so have most of the residents of Meaford. Please don’t let a bad apple or two get us onto your naughty list- there are enough blacklists in this town already.
Thank you Santa. I hope you enjoy your visit here this weekend, and I promise, that if you can make all of the things on my list happen, we will all be very, very good next year.
Sincerely,
Stephen Vance, Editor of The Meaford Independent.
P.S. One more thing. I know that a lot of work was done, and a lot of money was spent, but the new municipal website doesn’t work very well with my Firefox web browser. I’ve even tried it using Safari and Opera and it still has problems. Since we don’t all use Microsoft Explorer (more than 30 percent of us don’t in fact), is there any chance that you could help get the website working in all browsers?
