One Lump or Two?

ORIGINALLY POSTED Wednesday, January 24, 2007

It is the morning after and it may not be the time. On the other hand, making a record will undoubtedly help move it along.

Council met in committee last night…..a pattern is beginning to emerge. These are early days in the term, heretofore it has been easy to ignore.

The matter at hand is the repeated energetic efforts of three residents to persuade council that town staff advice is wrong on the matter of Aurora Cable's plans to improve their plant operation on their 11 acre site on Ridge Road.

The residents have been at council several times. Each time they come with new and heavily researched arguments of provincial and federal laws and regulations to prove they are right and everyone else is wrong.

Last night, they indicated they intended to come back again if their views did not prevail.

Council indicated willingness to continue efforts to find a way to resolve the matter.

I made the observation, the residents would clearly never be satisfied unless the town accepts their direction

At that point, the chairperson declared “those comments are not acceptable at this table.”

It is tiresome, not-to-say weird, to have to remind colleagues that I do have the right and the responsibility to offer a perspective.

We hear it and we read it, over and over about the public's right to know, the public's right to have input, the public's right to participate in the decision-making process. All of it valid. None of it new.

Yet this council, last council and it seems several councils before, has lost touch with the fact that they alone can claim authority to represent the public. They alone are accountable for decisions made during their term of office.

In this term, we now have a situation whereby a person speaking to council, on a subject of his own choosing, during an informal public forum, has his comments included in the formal record of proceedings, at his request. Staff are directed to follow-up and comment on the citizen's comments.

A councillor, on the other hand, in order to have an idea considered must file a notice of motion in advance. The motion must be seconded, only then can it become the subject of a debate. And only by a majority vote can staff accept direction to proceed.

No part of the debate appears in the record. Not even the vote becomes a matter of record unless there is a request for it to be recorded.

Much is written of the low public esteem that politicians enjoy. The media bears much of the responsibility but no group is more responsible than those who continually debase their office in the all-or-nothing pursuit of personal popularity versus public responsibility.