Well a whole smorgasbord of comments I am hearing this week
in the Crowsnest Pass on my blog, around town regarding the ongoing issues in
our community. First of all how many people were impressed with the Municipal
advertising, I was flabbergasted, the
costs between both papers and the radio I suspect they were in the range of
$8-10,000 of our taxpayers money spent on this blitz of information. I was
surprised the initial reaction I have gotten from the people that I have spoken
to was one of either, did not read it and do not care what it said, or couldn’t
understand it.
What amazed me more than the fact that we had $10,000 of
spare money available was the response time of the municipality?
The ratepayer’s flyer hit the paper on Tuesday; I believe
the papers go to press by the weekend. So in three days that package was put
together approved by Council, (my impression was that it came from council and
administration so I’m sure all of that team had their input and at least a
majority supported this document).
That timing is incredible when you look at the context of
other requests for information personally I requested information on the amount
of dollars spent on Consultants it took me three months to get that information.
The ratepayers requested a lot of the information that was released this week
back on August 2, did not receive it until October 9. The one the public is
waiting for the Rum Runner Days financial report, the event took place on the
weekend of July 19, now everybody understands that it takes a few weeks for the
bills to roll in and sort everything out. So I do not think anybody would have
been bothered having to wait until the end of August. But folks it’s now not
being released until Nov 6, and what’s made it look even worse is, its been on
the Council agenda three times and three times its been deferred. Everybody understands
the sensitivity of this issue so why would you do that?
The Petition last night it was announced at the Ratepayers
meeting that they have close to 2100 signatures on the petition, with 30 plus
people out in the community still signing names. It is not unrealistic to think
that the final number could be in the range of 2500. Now keep in mind tonight
Oct 25 will be two weeks since the petition started, we have a population of
5565 (2011 census) of which 855 are under the age of 18. So that means out of a
potential 4710 voters 45% have signed a petition in “two weeks”, municipal,
provincial even federal, elections are lucky if they get that kind of turnout
after a two-month election campaign, with polling stations in place.
The message here should be not “that people are getting led
down the garden path with mis-information” that argument could be made about
every candidate that has run in every election campaign in the history of
politics. The message that should be coming out of this process unless you have
totally lost touch with the public is that something is seriously wrong here,
unless of course the leadership here just chooses to totally ignore the
numbers.
Yes, we all understand that the public voted for change in
2010, and change does need to and will happen. Look at what as transpired over
the last little while, not just the petition, volunteers do we have any left,
in yesterday’s paper there was at least eight boards listed that are short of
members despite being advertised for months. The issue with the Firemen is
there one person out there that felt that was handled well. The swimming pool
society, the Bellevue Library. Obviously,
the public is not buying into what has been happening in our community.
