Friday, October 12, 2012

Another take on controversy in Crowsnest Pass


An open letter to our community of Crowsnest Pass, Councillors, Media and Provincial Officials

We are a group that have given calm contemplation to the discord embroiling our community and wish to represent our views through this letter to express our concern regarding what appears to be a lack of confidence in our current elected body of municipal councilors.

A vibrant community is made up of a number of opinions, the job of our elected officials is to consider as many of those opinions as possible and make decisions through due process within the parameters of the Municipal Act, and the requirements of Provincial and Federal law. We may not necessarily agree with those decisions, however we appreciate that we could never have all the details that led to that decision unless we ourselves were on council.

We are confident we all share a common goal in seeing our community prosper and move forward. The processes and procedures to accomplish this are obviously complex and involve multiple issues of history, legacy, legal and liability concerns and much, much more. We have charged our elected officials with the mandate to move our community into the 21st century while at the same time respecting the generations that came before us. This is a tall order. It will only be accomplished through an endorsement of support of the process of our duly elected officials and their compliance with good governance.

Our group wishes to provide our portion of that endorsement and confirm that there are members of this community who agree changes are necessary and changes are not always easy.

We request however full disclosure and transparency of the process. We understand full details cannot always be made public due to privacy act legislation and confidentiality protocols. However, we do expect a standard of professionalism and accountability by both our elected officials and the administration they oversee. Some have called for an external review of council and administration. We would support such a review with the goal to reinstate confidence by the majority of the community.

We wish to see a focus on good old fashioned dialog. Conversations with all stakeholders consisting of well thought-out, reasonable and pragmatic opinions and the decisions to match.  

Our future depends on it.

We are:

Scott Warris, Deb McKinlay, Vern Harrison, Bern Sawatzky, Elaine Beaudoin, Andrew Fairhurst, Tim Grier, Sheila Juhlin, George Machum, Pat Pichurski, Charli Martens-Carpenter, Heather O’Bear, Erin Fairhurst, Becky Pichurski, Penny Warris

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Was our council more open to dialogue and meaningful communication - things would not have come to this junction. To many of us who have watched our council at work, it is very obvious the council is quite good at a “top down” approach that is not very appropriate for a small community like ours. The results of this could have been predicted. There are no doubt a few people who are happy with the direction this council is going, but you don’t have to spend very much time within the community to know these people are few and far between. This council has been poor not only at communicating, but also at listening – going forward like a bulldozer armed with a mythical belief in some sort of a “Silent Majority.” Well, there is no such a thing, and this is why the petition is so important. Therefore, the petition is just simply another way of communicating with a council which, up to this point, has been very poor at communicating and dialogue.

Anonymous said...

Well said.

Anonymous said...

The silent majority are speaking all over the Crowsnest pass. Right now with their signatures.

Anonymous said...

"...the job of our elected officials is to consider as many of those opinions as possible and make decisions through due process ...
We request however full disclosure and transparency of the process."


Bruce at the Tuesday meeting via SJB:

He went on to say that a lot of our old bylaws were wrong. They were either worded wrong or just incorrect. He said that council and administration are now in the process of updating and correcting them.
...
He stated that "We need to clean up the community!!! We need bylaws with teeth, to clean it up."


Public input and "full disclosure and transparency of the process" is particularly important in developing community standards bylaws which will affect many people where they live.

So far it's the usual secret back room meeting process. Top secret until after it unanimously passes second reading.

Anonymous said...

I suspect next council will be able to find a Consultant that will find short coming with this council's by laws. People that get paid to find problems often do.