Improper address gets candidate revoked

[attach]2318[/attach]It was a short-lived campaign to become a school board trustee for Linda Pitney, a hand-writing expert who is [url=https://streeter.ca/women-deny-threats.html]defending herself[/url] in a case involving [url=https://streeter.ca/arrests-made-in-bomb-scare.html]charges of threatening death[/url], intimidation and harassment of public school employees.

Pitney, 64, filed her papers to run on Sept. 10. Seven days later, her candidacy was revoked by the city on the grounds her address, a box at a Toronto business centre, did not qualify her to run.

“As a school trustee, you must reside in the jurisdiction and that’s why it was revoked,” said Bonita Pietrangelo, director of elections for the city. “(Pitney) took a sworn affidavit about her residence and qualifying address… it subsequently came to our attention through Toronto police that the address was actually a post office box.”

Pitney had listed the post office box of her business, The Canadian College of Kineseography, as the qualifying address on her nomination papers.

“I have a spot in Toronto I stay at when I’m here, a spot in London I stay at when I’m there, I have a spot in Shelburne,” Pitney said.

Prior to the news of her revoked candidacy, Pitney told the Town Crier her long-standing interest in education prompted her to run for Ward 8 in Eglinton-Lawrence.

“Toronto District School Board needs more accountability… I would want a complaints procedure at the board, teacher accountability and principal accountability,” Pitney said.

“It’s a caring person, a determined person, someone’s whose real hang-up is human rights,” she said when asked to describe herself.

This would have been her third run in as many decades for a spot on the Toronto District School Board. She ran once in the 80s and then again in the 90s. Neither run was successful. Pitney is the only candidate to have her candidacy revoked so far in the Toronto municipal election. Her case is still before the courts.