"Cowardice asks the question...is it safe? Expediency asks the question...is it politic? Vanity asks the question...is it popular? But conscience asks the question...is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular but one must take it because it is right." ~Dr. Martin Luther King

Thursday 9 April 2009

Who the heck is Barry?

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I don't know Barry except he has chosen to engage in the discussion and I'm glad. His is a larger vision of forming a single city from the north end of the region. Ron Wallace would tell me to wash my mouth with soap for even raising the issue but I think it never hurts to think about worst case scenarios. How else can we avoid them?

There is co-operation between the "Northern Six"municipalities. We have a joint contract for the Green Bin program with Turtle Island. We share an internal auditing service. We buy salt sand and gasoline and something else through the Regional Co-op . There is probably room for more joint purchasing. Paper would be a good start. Though we should first get control of the amount we use.

With the myriad of advisory committees, production and circulation of thousands of pages serving no useful purpose, man hours and machines it takes to produce, collate and distribute, it doesn't bear thinking about how many thousands of dollars of labour and material end up in a shredder and then proceed to a re-cycling depot which cost us $8.5 million to build.

If we can't get control at our level how much less possible would it be in a city structure?

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