Have I Ever Told You

I don't believe administrative decisions or recommendations are made to Council without the Mayor's imprimatur.

Since early in 2009, staff reports and recommendations appear to be substantially fewer.

It didn't used to be like that.. I am compelled to ponder the political ramifications behind everything I read. I worry and wonder about stuff going on I don't even know about.

I asked several months ago about the financial reports from the Culture Centre. The Treasurer said he had one on his desk, he was waiting to get at.At the same time, I asked when the Aurora Museum was going to be set up in its rightful place.

That Mayor skirted around that question .

I had a subsequent conversation with an official at the Centre. It seems a report was submitted in April. Also arrangements were being made for a public presentation to Council in September.

Council never saw the report from April. September is half over. Still no presentation.

A town -owned facility, in it's first year of operation, with a budget of more than half a million dollars of taxpayers' money, new spending in our budget, managed by a board without political representation.

An election, the time of accountability, is underway.

Still, there has been no public accounting of this new, much publicised and ballyhooed cultural service which costs us so dear.

What are we supposed to think? Why is the report being withheld from Council and the community?

The board is not keeping secrets. They did what the agreement required .

It's not easy to keep secrets like that. When a report is required according to an agreement and intended to be part of the public record, it's not hard to track it down.

Not everyone has a vested interest in keeping secrets.

In the current climate, I can't even be sure the entire Council is in the dark about the substance of the report.

The gang of six openly about hang around after Council meetings. They "chat" together as if they have no homes. I am fairly certain they are not engaging in social chit-chat. Therefore the conversation must perforce be town affairs.

It's not how it should be. It is how it is in the Mormac regime.

I am thinking of the library board meeting on Wednesday evening;

the pointed questions asked by a tag-team of Councillors on Tuesday about how the public are or are not informed about the business of the library;

the spurious and vexatious resolution on the agenda from Councillor MacEachern's special friend.

The subsequent Invasion of the Body Snatchers led by the Mayor .

Are we expected to believe that all came together without a plan.

Well... I hardly think so.