Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Granger
Sighting In The Park":
Wonder why Mayor Dawe wasn't there to share
the downpour. Do you suppose he feels responsible?
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A more pressing and intriguing question would be the role of Councillors Gaertner, Ballard at the event. .
The town's efforts to fix the problem with the Culture Centre Board without actually fixing the problem, raises interesting angles by Councillorinvolvement with organisations separate from their elected authority.
The last administration created an autonomous body to govern use of a public facility; Church Street School.
An agreement was concurrently signed to purchase non-specific services provided in a valuable rent and maintenance free building with half a million dollars thrown into the bargain, to increase by 3% year by year.
The current administration thought the obvious problem could be resolved by adding two Councillors to a continuing autonomous board.
Tweren't never going to work
The board is no less autonomous by adding two Councillors.
It would deprive Council of two voting members when financial matters of the board are on the table for discussion.
The Councillor members would consequently have a conflict of interest at Council..
They would have a pecuniary interest whatever financial decisions needed to be made.
So here we are, eighteen months after taking office, no closer to solving the problem of continuing to ladle out hundreds of thousands of dollars to an outfit that calmly, deliberately and repeatedly thumb their noses at the elected body and the community it represents.
We are further from the obvious solution than we were. Tactics are delay.
We no longer know who's who among the players.
Already it was clear Councillors Gaertner,Gallo and Ballard were in cahoots with the board. They said so.
Then came the Abel- Pirri resolution , carefully constructed with the help of the town solicitor, seemingly supported by the rest of Council, until the last word of debate , then suddenly, inexplicably, sabotaged by Humphryes, Thompson and Mayor Dawe.
Perniciously, they aligned themselves with Gaertner, Gallo and Ballard.
As clumsy a maneuver as I have ever seen, to land with a foot on each side of the controversy, to cover their political arses, with all interest of the municipality thrown to the wolves. .
As we await advice from a judge on the question, we now know the town's interest did not come first with this administration , any more than it did with the last.
We have alignment between the Culture Centre Board, the Aurora Historical Society the Farmers' Market Executive and St Kitts Jazz Bash outfit with the town's resources in the centre, continually ripe for the fleecing .
Hundreds of thousands of dollars continually slip through our fingers without an iota of accountability.
While the Mayor writes a column for The Auroran assuring the community of fastidious efforts on behalf of Council to manage the town's resources.
You can fool some of the people, some of the time. You cant fool all of the people, all of the time.
Lying with the enemy is never a useful strategy.
Sunday, 5 August 2012
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5 comments:
Delay was the idea and it has worked well for them. The funds continue to flow with no accountability.
Same cast of characters - they have become adept at what they do - and Aurora pays. Maybe I will go back to reading about the Jackson family where I don't have a horse in the race or tax-dollars on the line.
Mayor Dawe's articles in the Auroran are already right up there with a couple of other do-not-bother-to read
columns. Two others spring right to mind. Otherwise the paper is doing very nicely.
Councillor Humphries is a sponsor of the Jazz Fest. She has helped at the event since its creation before being elected. It's difficult to know whose views and which side she represents when she too straddles the fence. Councillor Ballard has shown his true manner many times when coming to the rescue of both the Cultural Centre and Jazz Fest. In my opinion, he is not on Council to represent the town.
I feel that Councillor Ballard represents Councillor Ballard in much the same way as the former Council operated. If you watch him, you can see that every vote is tilted in the direction where he feels lie money or votes. He reminds me of former councillor Wilson running around before the last election putting notes of voters' doors saying that he was the one who had solved the problem of a lack of bathroom facilities by a soccer field. Just to let them know he was on the job, so to speak. Problem was it was his Council who had decided to cut down on just such facilities. It wasn't my neighbourhood and I wondered if it would work for him. Seems the answer was an exit from his tilty chair at the table.
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