Special Meeting of Collingwood Council

Scheduled for tomorrow evening at the Leisure Time Club, V.O.T.E. Collingwood's "Evening with Council" (see post "Do You Have Questions for Collingwood Council?") has now been elevated in stature to that of a "Special Meeting of Council" with a call to order by Mayor Carrier. This is the appropriate procedural approach as per the Municipal Act, 2001.
Notwithstanding this change in status Councillor Chadwick will not be attending the subject meeting citing what he feels is V.O.T.E.'s "special interest group" status.
I believe that all of us have "special interests." Between his love of animals, tequila and numerous other interests, Councillor Chadwick is no exception. I applaud him for them, we would be a pretty boring race without them and they do stop me from patronzing his buiness. As far as Council's participation in a meeting called by V.O.T.E.? First it is a meeting open to the public, free of charge to anyone wishing to attend. Secondly, two pre-determined questions were submitted in advance to the members of Council so as to not blind-side anyone. The most siginifcant of the two dealt with spending and taxation, topics not of a "special interest" nature nor ones of specific interest just to members of V.O.T.E.
Not withstanding all of the procedural arguements one might engage or hide behind to defend not participating in a meeting such as this, being in public office brings with it certain obligations. Should I decide to run and occupy such a postion, I for one would feel a certain degree of obligation to meet with my constituents regardless of the forum. If that meant meeting with every group in Town for some purposeful dialogue to better our community, so-be-it. Each and everyone of us contributes to the renumeration of our municipal officials. As such, should false allegations of having a "special interest" absolve anyone from being held accountable to the people they were elected to serve? You comments please.

Real Estate Consumers Drug of Choice

Initial users of http://www.realtor.ca/ had some fairly strong opinions regarding both actual and perceived shortcomings of this newly launched website which replaces http://www.mls.ca/. An article in the Toronto Star entitled "Messing with our real estate crack" highlights both the issues and steps being taken by the Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA) to resolve the issues.

The writer will be attending a CREA meeting in Quebec City next week during which time I am sure an update will be provided relative to the ongoing tweaking and modifications of the new realtor.ca website. This very effective tool for consumers has become in recent years, the drug of choice for real estate junkies or even those less addticted, looking to buy or sell property across Canada. As was the case in the past, REALTORS® are no longer the gatekeepers of information. Our job is now to provide what information consumers want and never has this been more important than in the changing market conditions we are now facing.

MLS.ca Becomes REALTOR.ca

With over 3 million visitors monthly, Canada’s most popular consumer real estate website http://www.mls.ca/ was recently re-launched as http://www.realtor.ca/ featuring an entirely new use interface. These two websites and their respective domain names are the property of the Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA) which has 97,500 REALTOR® members across Canada.
Increasing, consumers everywhere are user the Internet to search for properties, agents and other real estate related information. Studies conducted by CREA indicated that consumers were of the opinion that http://www.mls.ca/ was the actual MLS® system used by REALTORS®. In reality http://www.mls.ca/ now known as http://www.realtor.ca/ is a consumer only website that allows both buyer and sellers, online access to current MLS® listed properties across Canada of which the sellers have authorized their uploading to the site. Rebranding this website to http://www.realtor.ca/ was done to (a) avoid any confusion that consumers had with thoughts that is was the actual MLS® system they were accessing and (b) using the name http://www.realtor.ca/ was felt to better represent the many and varied services that REALTORS® provide to consumers, some of which are highlighted via links on the new site. Anyone using or that has bookmarked http://www.mls.ca/ in their web browser, will automatically be re-directed to the new http://www.realtor.ca/ site.This new site features a number of improvements over the old interface, the most significant of which is the interactive mapping of active listings that is accomplished via the use of Microsoft’s Virtual Earth software. Consumers searching for properties of a specific type, price range and location will continue to receive downloaded information and photos about the available properties but will also have their property selections mapped for them. Given the fact that a growing number of buyers for Georgian Triangle area property do not reside full-time and are not overly familiar with the area, this mapping function is a great addition to the new website.