I don't know

   Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "More of the story about Hidden Taxes":

Why wasn't the "usual complete background info" provided by staff to Council last week? Was it just a slip?
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I  don't  know why. We had four-hundred and fifty pages  and twenty-six items of business to  get through. Plus we met at 6 p.m.  for an in camera meeting .W dealt with 2 items on that  agenda and deferred the third. 

Only one committee and one Council meeting was scheduled for March. We haven;t caught up with the  town's  business still. 

I left at 10.45 p.m. on Tuesday. The rest of Council went on until 11.28 p.m. and still didn't get everything done .

A seven o'clock start means by  ten minutes to  ten, people are slowing down and not really doig justice to the decisions they have to make. 

In the old days we started at eight and adjournment was 11.00 p.m. 

Then some bright spark probably thought if the start was earlier,the meeting would finish earlier.

Nope ...that's not what happens.

So... we had four-hundred and fifty pages to read and twenty six items to debate. There was an agreement of seventy five pages and one of sixty-nine to read. 

Several items were deferred  after I left the meeting. 

There was lots of background material. The skate board park was an item. The Recreation Director always has his  material complete, That one was deferred. 

The recommendation to top up maternity benefits so that  growing  a family doesn't create financial  hardship to the family was also deferred. I'm not even sure how that item got on to an agenda. The Human Resources Manager  recommended  it.

If I want  to put forward an idea  to Council, I have to put forward a notice of  motion; in writing. Two weeks later I have to follow up with a motion in writing. The motion has to be seconded by  another Councillor before it gets an  the table to be debated. And I'm an elected representative of the people paying the bills.

That reminds me, the job  of Customer Services Manager has been  posted internally. The pay is $88,000- $100,000 a year plus  benefits.

The customer service thingy was supposed not to cost us any extra . Now we are adding space to the town hall at a cost of a million to accommodate extra staff. One of whom is a manager of customer service at a very generous salary. What does a Manager of  Customer  Service manage?

We  dealt with  a recommendation on Tuesday to retain a consultant to do a study of service levels.
That was a motion from the Mayor. I askked what it was about, How did it differ from Custmer Service. Didn't understand the answer.

The $440,000 software program we bought a year and  a half  still isn't up and running and I've 
 lost track of how much more money we've spent on that since we bought it  and it would be hard to tell how many more people.

Anyway, to answer the question,I don't know why the background was missing. I didn't notice it was  with all the other stuff I had to read. I only thought about it afterwards when I thought about everything I'd heard . I had to go back to the agenda to see if it  was there before I   could say  it wasn't .

Weird space and bits of flotsam appeared at the end of the last  post. It doesn't mean anything. It wasn't meant to be. 





Now