Today, council seems to operate like a 1960s caretaker board. The apparent unspoken philosophy is simple: keep taxes low at all costs, ignore the future, and treat road maintenance and weekly garbage pickup as the beginning and end of local government.
That “caretaker” approach isn’t saving us money. It’s presiding over a managed decline.
By refusing to think ahead, the current administration has settled into a reactive posture that touches every corner of township life:
- No economic growth plan, and no active effort to bring commercial revenue into the municipality.
- Legacy infrastructure funds spent on “emergency demolitions” instead of invested in proactive growth.
- Closure of vital regional infrastructure, like the northern fire halls at White Lake and Tatlock, shifting real risk onto families and driving up household insurance premiums.
- A passive response to destructive, below-water-table industrial projects like the Highland Line Pit beside Barbers Lake, threatening eco-tourism and cold-water fisheries while local taxpayers subsidize the resulting road repairs.
- Secrecy and a lack of transparency at every level of decision-making.
Supporting Example: The Kitten Mill
The Kitten Mill touches every one of the systemic problems our township currently faces:
Lack of Transparency
The matter was discussed in camera for roughly 11 months. The demolition contract, worth close to $700,000, was never brought to council for public review, and the Reeve reportedly withheld the cost from the public — despite the township’s own procurement policy requiring a report to council for any award over $100,000.
Public Engagement Ignored
The Lanark Heritage Preservation Society brought council a funded, professionally assessed alternative: a conditional purchase option, an architectural feasibility study finding the stone structure salvageable, a petition, and national media coverage. Council proceeded with demolition regardless.
No Economic Vision
The Society’s plan wasn’t preservation for its own sake — it was an economic development plan: stabilize the building, use it as an events venue, market, and tourism draw, then fund further restoration from that revenue, modeled on successful examples in Carleton Place and Almonte. It is exactly the kind of local economic development plan the township still does not have.
Financial Waste
Nearly $700,000 was spent to demolish a building instead of restoring one, with no clear public accounting of the funding source, and no tax recovery process in evidence.
None of this happened by accident. The secrecy, the dismissed alternative, the missing economic vision, the six-figure bill with no accounting – each is what a caretaker mentality produces once it’s left unchecked long enough. The Kitten Mill is simply where all of it became visible at the same time, in the same file. The real question isn’t whether this was a one-off. Rather, it’s how many other decisions are following the same pattern, just without a heritage building and a petition to make it visible.
Lanark Highlands doesn’t need a council that manages its own decline quietly. It needs one that plans ahead, listens before deciding, and can account for what it does with our money.