Editorial

Like many, I was somewhat surprised upon hearing the news of the bold and brazen theft from Meaford's LCBO outlet earlier this month. The fact that someone can walk into a tiny small town liquor store and walk out with $1,000 worth of product without paying for it, nor meeting any resistance, is shocking indeed, though not exactly uncommon in...

As I have written a time or two over the years, few things make me happier than seeing residents engage in the process of municipal governance, and that is exactly what we saw at Monday's council meeting, as residents attended council to make presentations and to participate in the public question portion of the meeting. The focus of concern...

Welcome back, dear readers, and Happy New Year. I hope that all had a joy-filled, relaxing holiday season. Here at The Independent, we are back to work after taking a semi-break over the past two weeks, and our first newspaper of 2025 has now been published. So a new year begins, often a time of resolutions and goal setting for...

It has been a long year, and after this week's newspaper hits newsstands, the Meaford Independent team is taking its annual break. For a small rural community newspaper, opportunities to take a break are few, so for the past decade the Meaford Independent team has taken advantage of the late December holiday season to shut down for two weeks to...

On Monday, council held their final regular meeting of 2024, and while the delayed budget process for 2025 might be the top issue currently occupying the minds of council and ratepayers, one of the major issues facing council in the years to come will be the cost of water and wastewater services, which are forecast to increase significantly over...

There was no easing into winter weather this year, as the significantly milder than typical autumn that we had been experiencing allowed us to head outdoors wearing little more than a lightweight windbreaker all the way until the very end of November. And then winter weather was thrust upon us over the weekend with a significant amount of snowfall,...

As I mentioned in last week's editorial, I had nearly completely written an editorial for this week, chronicling my months' long quest to obtain a public document from the municipality, that document being the municipal hiring policy. However, with the departure of Meaford's CAO, who had been the roadblock to accessing that document, announced by Mayor Ross Kentner at the...

If you have tuned in to the first two full days of council's discussion of the 2025 municipal budget, you already know it has been unlike anything we have ever seen. It has been two full days, 15 hours worth, of discussions, and councillors are more confused and frustrated than before they began, as is the public no doubt. Unlike...

During Monday's Remembrance Day ceremony at the Cenotaph outside Meaford Hall, where hundreds had gathered to observe the ceremony, I was thinking about an editorial that I wrote back in 2016, that sadly is as relevant today as it was eight years ago. “In many ways, it’s a charmed life here in Canada, which is why I think it is...

On Monday, Meaford's council was presented with a 2025 draft budget package that makes clear that council is in for a challenging time as they work toward establishing the municipality's budget for next year. As presented to council on Monday, the draft budget calls for a rate increase of 6.33 percent in 2025, which doesn't seem outrageous as a place...