COMMENTARY: Change for the better?

I’m Bill Kingston with today’s commentary. I lost a bet to Seaway News Editor Todd Lihou. We all heard the calls for change. If I got change for every time I heard the word “change” during this campaign I would be a very rich man. But never did I think the change was going to be that extensive and now my wallet is $5 lighter. Voters, probably fed up with the goings on at city hall, the court cases and the higher taxes, stripped almost every long-term incumbent off the council map. Denis Carr’s loss is probably the one that surprised me the most. Now you have a council with a new dynamic. Bernadette Clement and Elaine MacDonald are back in and that’s no surprise given their history in elections. But it’s also younger with Justin Towndale, Carilyne Hebert and Brock Frost. A bit of fiscal conservatism in Claude McIntosh and David Murphy. Plus you have your passionate talkers in Andre Rivette and Mark MacDonald and your second term councillor – Maurice Dupelle. It will be interesting to see how this new group works together but the noticeable shift to the left worries me. As one political insider put it, “If you have a pet project, the next four years are your chance to push it through.”