Bill_macdonald

Jeff Green | Nov 16, 2006

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$5 1/2 million later, MacDonald shown the door

by Jeff Green

Bill MacDonald was at ease when reached on the phone the day after losing an election for the first time in his 18-year political career in Central Frontenac.

“It seems to me there was a movement across the province,” he said, “The lower tier is suffering from the fallout from provincial impacts, and unless you have the popularity of someone like Hazel McCallion in Mississauga, you were vulnerable.”

Paradoxically, the election defeat came to MacDonald at the end of a year in which Central Frontenac has obtained two large grants: a $4 million road construction grant that MacDonald had been working on for at least six years, and a $1.6 million grant to build a new home for the medical centre in Sharbot Lake.

“When you get defeated after everything that we’ve accomplished, it does leave a bitter taste in your mouth, and I felt that last night,” Bill MacDonald admitted, “but today is another day.”

He said he is apprehensive about what is coming at Central Frontenac, naming the responsibilities that will come with the new municipal act, the groundwater protection act, and provincial riding redistribution as possible threats to the township, but said he thinks the councils he has led have “built a very strong foundation. I’m proud of what we’ve accomplished in the past nine years.”

Bill MacDonald said he hopes that the new council will maintain a vision of the whole township and will avoid pitting one district against the others.