[quote=“Crazy Train”]… Have they made mistakes? Of course they have and I’m sure that the electorate will makes changes where they see fit.
You mention transparency. Let me refer you to the Community Charter Part 4 S. 90. We elect these people to act in our best interest within the law. In the closed meetings they’re doing exactly what they were elected for.
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That’s okay, I almost know it by heart, section 90 of the Community Charter reads “90 (1) A part of a council meeting may be closed to the public if the subject matter being considered relates to or is one or more of the following: …” That topic has actually been discussed here on occasion.
They don’t have to close all of those meetings, they “may”, and they do, all too often, for all too long. Section 90 is supposed to be an exception to public meetings, but here it’s not an exception, it’s how they conduct a large part of their business, perhaps most of their business. I think that you would have to go quite a ways to find another city council whose closed meetings are so long that they order in take-aways.
Maybe you know that in those closed meetings they’re doing “exactly what they were elected for”, but we don’t. We’re not insiders. I think some of the councillors recognize that there is a problem, which was why councillor Ashley’s motion calling for more information was supported by a majority of the council. But, again, unfortunately not by the two mayoralty candidates. On that issue alone Kathy may have lost my vote. She just doesn’t seem to understand the concern.
As for the mayor, I honestly wonder how much his grasp of these issues has changed since he was a city clerk, long ago. Public expectations evolve. We close meetings because legally we can, without explanation, doesn’t really cut it anymore.
We need to create revenue, yes, but are tax hikes the only way? What happened to the mayor’s plans about selling off surplus assets and so on? That was one reason why I voted for him last election. There have been a few lots sold here and there, without competitive bids for some reason, but that hardly makes a dent.
And of course there’s that other issue, the elephant in the room (sacred cow also comes to mind), of whether this city, with all of its problems, needs to be in the phone, cable and internet business. Every municipal government in western Canada that was in the telecom business has gotten out, in Edmonton’s case with a special fund set up to use the proceeds to better the community. Is that out of the question here? Apparently so. A forbidden topic it seems.
Maybe it’s time that the capital tied up in Citywest was put to work somewhere else, rather than just assuming that the solution to any revenue problem is raising taxes. Any candidate that had the courage to actually discuss that issue would have my vote.
I leave aside questions about the need to cut costs. Some would say that we no longer have the population to support a full-time fire department, a point that has been raised here a number of times. I’m unsure about that, but a candidate who was willing to look at options and make those tough choices would have my vote.
Ah yes, Watson Island, a popular topic for quite some time on the discussion board. How do we know that the whole “debacle” (an apt description) is not the “the councils fault”? Is that knowledge or belief? Why should we believe that it is all just the fault of Sunwave and Kitkatla? As the saying goes, there are two sides to every story and the truth is somewhere in between.
The court documents are posted on here, somewhere in the archives. Sun Wave’s claims against the city do not make for very pleasant reading, and if some of what is claimed in there is true, raises some concerns about how the city conducts its business. That being said, we don’t know whose fault it all is. We’ll have to wait for the supreme court to clarify those issues for us. Hopefully the decision, whichever way it goes will be released before the election.
It’s not quite that simple. The RCMP has a contract (I read the master agreement, which I’m pretty sure applies here) that says that they can do upgrades to bring the police station up to current standards and send the city an invoice which it will have to pay.
But bringing the building up to par isn’t necessarily the same as what the mayor would like to spend over $6 million on. And replacing the fire station, which would cost another $6 million, is a separate matter and by no means inevitable. I was a bit surprised that doing the two facilities as one project rather than two, is about the same cost. Maybe the projects should be spread out a bit, rather than hitting the taxpayers with a 12.5% hike in one go, or maybe the mayor should look for other sources of revenue, astonishing though that thought may be.
As for the alternate approval process being “to streamline the process”, well yes that is what the mayor would like us to think, but to their credit even his own council did not buy that line.
[quote=“Crazy Train”]
Thanks for the discussion. This is exactly what we need rather than just bashing the candidates.[/quote]
You’re most welcome. I was becoming a bit despondent about the quality of the discourse myself.