Wednesday, October 21, 2015

Is Democracy Being Served At City Hall?

OPINION

Since being elected, some members of our new city council have valiantly attempted to follow through on their promises vis a vis the Colliery Dams and the level of taxation in the city.

In my humble opinion, from my vantage point I think their efforts to bring about a different conclusion to the Colliery Dams issue did not have the cooperation of the Mayor or members of city staff and the provincial government. The failure of a resolution of Council and the abysmal waste of time and money on the Select Committee are possibly due to a city council that simply has only begun the learning curve.

Whether the most recent attempt to see what went right and what went wrong with the whole dam process will bear any meaningful fruit remains to be seen. A sceptic might predict it will be another wasted effort if those being investigated are given a hand in crafting how the investigation will be conducted.

Arguably over the past decade or so taxpayers have not been well served with the way in which multiple millions of tax dollars have been spent. Also arguably it could be said that no one has ever been held accountable, the blame for which can be squarely laid at the feet of an apathetic electorate who bitch and complain over coffee, shrug their shoulders and simply carry on.

If this investigation is as thorough as it's proponents hope perhaps for once we will see some real transparency, accountability and responsibility within the organization responsible for the spending of 200 million tax dollars. That would be refreshing. 

allvoices

2 comments:

  1. Granted the public is partially at fault. Yet the consistent factor is city staff.
    It is not all staff, but the culture has built up over many years and city council both past and current only has one employee, the CAO! Ultimately the buck has to stop somewhere and when there is a culture of rampant spending, most of those recommendation come from staff.

    ReplyDelete
  2. NOTE to Anonymous poster who submitted post begnning: The departing CAO is partly responsible for the mess at city hall and his efforts to scapegoat council Please resubmit including our name and it will be posted.

    ReplyDelete

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