Mayor dresses down Indie columnist

Under the headline "Whatever happened to transparency…" Wedge's Civic Alert column questioned several city policies and made statements that Trent says were erroneous and should have been corrected prior to publication.

In a strongly worded letter sent Saturday to Wedge and copied publicly to city council, the Westmount Municipal Association, and the Independent, Trent rebutted Wedge's allegations with the same point-by-point style in which he shot down the logic of political adversaries such as former Montreal mayor Pierre Bourque during the megacity debates of the early 2000s. "It was not just that this rant contained a number of contradictions, was seemingly written in haste, and was clearly unedited, but the tone — in parts — was just plain vicious," Trent wrote. "You can fault me (or the City) for being disorganized. You can fault me for handling the budget the same way I always did as mayor for ten years (and, before that, as Finance Commissioner), but how dare you fault me for lacking transparency?"

Trent concluded by expressing surprise at being attacked in a local publication. "I used to get some pretty vicious editorials in La Presse and Le Devoir while fighting for Westmount’s survival or while fighting to regain its City status," he wrote, "but I never thought I’d get the same treatment 'at home.'"