“I am seriously considering running given what has transpired over the past couple of years,” he says.

Actually, it looks like a done deal. We have the first challenger about to throw his crown in the ring to be the next lord mayor of this august little kingdom. “There are just a couple of people I need to give a heads up to first,” he says, “and then I will let you know when to print.”

The election’s this autumn. Betting is among senior members of the rebel NOTL residents rabble that the current monarch, Gary Zalepa, will be buried if he choses to run again. Some see him as a part-time ruler, balancing his public duties with his career as a real estate executive. They look at the new hotels, the building spurt, the tourist hordes and the assault on built heritage and say Lordy Z has lost that balance.

In fact, this council may have played a role in polarizing our bucolic home town. And — as incredible as it may seem — in heaping criticism upon your hapless reporter.

“I would like to counter Garth Turner’s ever negative reporting,” Peter Rand wrote to Mr. Editor last week, “the most recent being his worst possible view of the rebuild of Shaw’s Royal George Theatre.”

As regular addicts of this space will know, the local theatrical-industrial complex plans to demolish four heritage buildings in the town’s epicentre, then spend three years erecting a 53,500-square-foot, six-storey monolith with a faux façade on Queen Street, where a real one now stands. There is nothing like this $85-million mass in NOTL’s core, which will take several thousand truck visits to complete by some time in 2029.

The number of extra theatre seats created: almost none. The fastest-growing demographic for Shaw attendees: people over 80. The amount of public money going into this: about half. Local heritage rules broken: all of them.

Peter Rand ain’t buying it.

“During the George’s building we can celebrate and be thankful it is being done,” he says. “To pass negative judgement … would seem unnecessary, indeed trivial. To highlight the increased trucking and traffic during construction of the George as a disaster, it can be seen as a small cost for this theatre being rescued in a modern and permanent way. At least that trucking is in a commercial area; and is temporary.”

The cost to businesses whacked by this mega-project is unlikely to be “small”, and the trucks — every single one of them — will be travelling through residential streets, past more than 30 heritage properties. For three years.

But wait. Liz McElheran wants to pile on regarding “the negativity of Garth Turner’s columns”.

“Spewing “snarky” remarks every week does not take talent nor intelligence,” she says, suggesting I have neither, which may well be true. “Surely you can find someone new to write ‘opinion’ pieces — hopefully opinions that are not peppered week after week with myopic political views and nasty subjective angles that only serve his own ego. He’s been given a forum for far too long.”

Talentless, dumb, myopic and egocentric. And negative. Off with my head!

See what I mean about polarization?

So let’s have a few words from Trisha Romance, internationally known artist and resident who NOTL recently feted. How does she see this issue?

“I don’t know how the residents surrounding this mess tolerate the assault on their senses?” she says of the construction mayhem to come. “I really wanted to thank you for your outstanding reporting! You dig deep and we all wait for your weekly findings!”

Well, not everyone.

This might be a helluva year in town.

Garth Turner is a NOTL resident, journalist, author, wealth manager and former federal MP and minister. garth@garth.ca