Crowsnest Pass misconceptions, and the picture the authors paint

Today my fellow blogger and candidate for Mayor talks about one of the local papers in the Crowsnest Pass and the picture they paint.
http://blog.johnprince.ca/

Well this raises a great opportunity to talk once more about the great bogeyman of the last three years the 4-3 vote.
If I was a complete stranger coming in to this town I would assume based on what I have read that every decision made by council over the last three years was by a vote of 4-3.

I will try to clear the picture for those that have been brain washed, we had four councilors that stood for "change" in the Crowsnest Pass, three that stood for Status Quo. And that's fine everybody gets to stand for whatever they like (its called democracy).
But yes those four councilors voted the same way on issues that involved "change", (Crowsnest Centre, Arena's, Cleanup's, Eliminating new positions at the town, building our reserves back up, stopping members of council from promoting private business) the other three members that didn't want change for the most part voted against "change".

Does that come as a big surprise that people that wanted change voted for it? of course not, no more than people that opposed change voted against it.

But the local paper with the support of those that did not want change, knowing that neither of them could come up with sound facts or arguments to oppose change did the only thing they could, they created a smoke screen the 4-3, the issues were no longer the issue the vote was.

For the information of the taxpayers, councils here and most other places have been spilt for one reason or another forever. The issue here, was and is "change". It will be the same on the next council, , look at the list of candidates, we all know some will fight for "change" and some will oppose it, I do not expect seven to be elected all in favour of change or against.

I challenge anybody to look at the local newspaper from 2004-2007 and find one mention of the 4-3 as a big issue, guess what we had a 4-3 council three councilors believed in change four believed in Status Quo, and believe or not when the issue of change came up it got voted down 3-4.

A while back I reviewed all motions of council, well in excess of 90% were decided by something other than 4-3. Why because they dealt with something other than change.

Its no different than the corporate reviews on council, all three of them gave council a less than impressive reviews, three different councils, which all had only one thing in common the leader Mayor Irwin, as that ever been spoke about in the local paper?

Yes in my six years on council I have seen the Mayor as the Chair of council allow certain people the opportunity to rant and rave in the council chambers, with not a word said by him or the local paper.
I approached several members of the media when I first got on council about reporting these types of performances, they told me that they did not want to take sides, I told them I didn't want them to, I only asked them if somebody ranted and raved like a lunatic report it.

Anyway lets decide this election on real issues, do we want change or not?

Ottawa $55 Billion deficit and we are subsidizing Business

My fellow blogger Mr Prince beat me to it! http://blog.johnprince.ca/2010/06/pork-barreling-politics-alive-and-well.html

I ask the question how does the average Joe on the street get his information on politics, it should be through a totally unbiased media that reports the "news". How can the media be unbiased when it is paid off by the government in power. On the release below you will see that Ted Menzies is providing $420,605 to the local "unbiased" media in his riding.
When you do the math on 308 riddings that's $129,546,340 that's a lot of money.

http://www.tedmenzies.ca/EN/5058/114426

Does anybody know anything about this program? when did it start, who brought it in? why are the feds doing this?

Reporting the News in the Crowsnest Pass

Reading a post on my fellow Bloggers site, regarding the issue of "media censorship" in the Crowsnest Pass.
http://blog.johnprince.ca/
I was a little surprised in my five years on Council I have not noticed any kind of censorship in the local papers until now. (Hate to be sarcastic)
Now if we want to talk about bias that's a different issue, some examples.
The four to three vote on council some of the media makes this sound like it's the regular way of doing business, they fail to report that 90%+ of all motions at council record a vote other than 4-3. Even in our corporate review it reports that the 4-3 is only common on significant issues (Crowsnest Centre).
The greater problem where the issue of bias comes in, is that the previous council and every council prior to that had some kind of spilt but because the spilt favoured the Mayor and his supporters that was acceptable and obviously not news worthy . Bias? maybe.
The Corporate Review itself after numerous discussions with various members of our community, I discussed with as many people as I could what came out of it based on what they had read in the media. Depending on the time of the week I spoke to people (One paper comes out on Tuesday the other on Friday) the first comments were all focused on the 4-3 and the perception that the issues Council faces are the fault of one part of council. The group of people I spoke to later in the week seem to feel that there are many issues related to council and its the fault of all of them. Bias? Maybe
The issue of the Crowsnest Centre from what has been printed in the media a total stranger to the Community not knowing the problems, would assume that Council is shutting down a solid, financially viable, some people have even suggested profitable, operation. Of course I do not believe that nonsense but I guess we will find out the truth at the end of the year when the Municipality takes it back over. Bias? Maybe
Speaking of the Corporate Review and thinking about Mr Prince's comments what did the Review have to say about the local media.
Page 69 "The relationship to the local newspapers appears to be mixed and may be based on the degree of support shown by one relative to the other to one "side" of Council" Does that say Bias?
Anyway I tip my hat to Mr Prince for raising this "new issue", I'm sure when he was on Council there was no issues with "Censorship, Bias, One sided reporting, Spilt votes, etc etc"