The Our Town - Clarenville Blog by Paul Tilley

On Tuesday September 24, townspeople in the Province's municipalities will vote for new municipal councils. Nomination Day is Tuesday, August 27.  In Clarenville there will be two votes; one for the position of Mayor and another for the 6 other councilors who will constitute our Town's government for the next 4 years.   If you are interested in running, Municipalities NL and The Department of Municipal Affairs have created a great resource called MAKING YOUR MARK - it has lots of useful information for would-be-councilors. Here in Clarenville, I expect there will be a lot of interest from people considering running.  I’ve been there and I have some insights on what a new Councilor should know about the town.  Here is a summary of publicly available information on our Town. THE MUNICIPALITY THAT WE CALL CLARENVILLE Population Serviced Clarenville has one of the fastest growing populations in the province.  With an official 2011 population o...

On Tuesday September 24, townspeople in the Province's municipalities will vote for new municipal councils. Nomination Day is Tuesday, August 27.  In Clarenville there will be two votes; one for the position of Mayor and another for the 6 other councillors who will constitute our Town's government for the next 4 years.   If you are interested in running, Municipalities NL and The Department of Municipal Affairs have created a great resource called MAKING YOUR MARK - it has lots of useful information for would-be-councillors. Here in Clarenville, I expect there will be a lot of interest from people considering running.  Here's my take on what I perceive to be the key issues a new council/mayor/councillor will face...   Immediate Issues Municipal Waste - Clarenville is one of the only communities in eastern NL to have twice a week, all you can throw away, garbage collection. We have no curbside recycling and no composting (These make up...

If you have been at Walmart of Kent lately, you will have noticed the land development activity that is going on behind these stores.   That development is designed to open up commercial development space in that Shoal Harbour Drive / Coish Place area.      The developer, in this case, is the Town of Clarenville. The Town has borrowed and spent a good chunk of change in order to make that land usable.  At the Council meeting this past Tuesday, the Town accepted a tender from Cougar Construction for $293,000 to do further work.  The problem is that this tendered amount was 30% more ($93,000) than what was predicted by the Town’s own estimates.  That’s a significant overage and a large amount of money that the Town will have to unexpectedly borrow.  It could also potentially affect the town’s ability to borrow for other things - like much needed road improvements.  Although I have no doubt that over tim...

Several months ago, I wrote a post on my blog about development in Clarenville. In the post, I referenced the importance of communication with residents to alleviate any concerns that they might have about a neighbouring development. The development that I wrote about in February 2011 referenced concerns about flooding and timelines for completion. The development is still ongoing and today there was evidence of concern of potential flooding and impact that the development will have on those people who live on Prince and Viking Streets.  Culverts on those streets are almost full today after last night's rain. In fact, work had to be done early in the morning to divert water away from houses. While it looks like there are plans in place to divert water, it's not done at the moment and those who live in the area are not aware of future plans. It's very disconcerting, particularly with Hurricane Igor still in peoples' minds and hurricane season upcoming, to se...