Jonathan Scott

Fantastic to join the Bradford Board of Trade for the Annual General Meeting, Zoom-style, with fellow local small business owners. Great discussion about our local economy and building back from COVID-19.

My latest column covers the urban-design guidelines the town is considering. "When Mayor Rob Keffer was first elected, he said he wasn’t pro-growth or against growth: he was for 'smart growth'. That instinct needs to guide our approach to design in the town: do what is smart, not simply what is cheap or easy in the short term because the smart solution will end up being the more effective and affordable one in the long term. Perhaps put another way, Bradford West Gwillimbury is too big and mature of a town now to do otherwise." https://www.bradfordtoday.ca//opinion-when-it-comes-to-tow

The BWG Public Library Board met last evening for the first time in person since March: Masks and physical distancing, and moving our agenda of constantly improving the library forward.

A personal column about working to preserve local historic churches.

It’s time for Town Council to update our ward boundaries.

Godfather-ing COVID-19 style at St John's for my niece.

As the Brits say, I’m chuffed to bits to be nominated for these Bradford Board of Trade awards.

It’s past time to fix County Council.

We had a good meeting of the St John’s Presbyterian Church board discussing our budget and facilities last night. Pictured here smiling with our eyes.

"Since I was a student trustee on the Simcoe County District School Board, I’ve advocated for converting local schools into 'community hubs' exactly as the Mayor is planning to do with Bradford Public as a hub for community service organizations." But... "There is something inherently wrong about how the Ministry of Education governs surplus school property ...there is a stipulation that any offer must be 'fair market value'.... I wrote about this issue in The Globe and Mail in 2015, writing that this 'fair market value' requirement is 'an unnecessary hindrance to keeping schools in public hands'. I argued then that, 'The requirement should be changed. We should want to allow for creative partnerships between public institutions to keep these facilities in public ownership and useLet the school board and the other public institution sort out their own, mutually beneficial quid pro quo.' In other words, there’s only one taxpayer, so why not allow for more flexibility between public institutions to ensure the public interest is served?" Read the full story: https://www.bradfordtoday.ca//opinion-bradford-exhibits-gr.

Fix the damn garbage collection. https://www.bradfordtoday.ca//opinion-countys-reasons-for-

Some good news in the works for our downtown, in my latest: https://www.bradfordtoday.ca//committee-supports-a-permane

My take: Council made the right call calling a by-election. https://www.bradfordtoday.ca//opinion-council-made-the-rig

The Baynes family is right. I’m actually shocked this is even being debated. Call a by-election. https://www.bradfordtoday.ca//family-of-late-councillor-ga

In part four of my series on Ward 2, I write about how the next ward councillor should focus on sprucing up local parks: https://www.bradfordtoday.ca//opinion-the-time-is-ripe-to-.

Vice-Chair Jonathan Scott says it will be an ‘eye opening exercise’ where they will be able to get good direction from the community. ‘It entails looking at the library as an institution in the broadest possible way to see where we can do better, and where there might be opportunities that we haven’t necessarily thought of to not only do anti-racism work...but promote diversity and inclusion.’ https://www.bradfordtoday.ca//bradford-library-board-commi

Part three of my series on Ward 2: solving traffic issues requires an "all-of-the-above" approach. I also offer a reply to some of the thoughtful comments I received in response to my column on how to keep taxes as low as possible.

Part two of my series looks at a simple way the next Ward 2 Town Councillor can work to keep taxes as low as possible by creating a strategy to unlock the real estate assets the town owns. https://www.bradfordtoday.ca//opinion-council-needs-to-unl

Over the past few months, our Bradford West Gwillimbury Public Library Board voted to undertake an audit and to prepare an action plan to do the work of anti-racism and to promote inclusion and diversity at our Library and Cultural Centre. We're proud to be putting out this statement announcing the next steps in this important effort: http://bradford.library.on.ca:57780///board_diversity.pdf

A simple idea to help with back to school, by yours truly in the Toronto Sun: https://torontosun.com//5d2b9e0b-12de-44ec-8a80-acce1b6bd/

"The town and our business community have made progress on downtown revitalization but the best is yet to come, and the work is only just getting started. This renewal project, more than half of which is in Ward 2, will need to be a central priority for council and the new Ward 2 councillor." https://www.bradfordtoday.ca//opinion-next-ward-2-councill