John Abel has left a new comment on your post "Ah But...Ya gotta love politics":
We can all agree on one thing Councillor Buck;
A new Joint Operation Centre wouldn't even be up for consideration had the Town maintained the old Hydro Building.
That property and building is a perfect compliment to the Scalon yard.
On an aside. I thought the coffee was terrible last night. I couldn't drink mine.
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Thank you for that CouncillorAbel.
The Parks department were occupying the Hydro building. They were building parks furniturei in the workshop in the winter.
Office space was used for town archive storage.
Heritage salvage was handily stored in the yard.
It's a five acre site .
Parks were evicted from the facility to make room for "the kiddies to play" as expressed by the former Mayor.
Hundreds of thousands of dollas were spent on the building Federal government use.
A lease was signed for ten years , at a rent unrelated to the value and loss of the facility for town purposes.
The lease is not a public document because of national security.
We believe there is no termination clause. What kind of a lease is that?
This Council has not even asked the question.
We purchased a new site for the joint facility because the price was "right"
The sites problems are now cited as the reason for the "upward cost pressures"
The Aurora Family Leisure Complex is in the same geological area. Problems experienced with that building were surely sufficient to warn of difficulties of making that site useable for the purpose.
Access and egress is onto the horrendously busy Industrial Parkway is seriously compromised
.Works and Parks are entirely truck and equipment operations.
Imagine sand and road materials in the huge dump trucks required for delivery, negotiating access and egress on and from a steep incline onto an artery designed to serve and acting as bypass for Yonge Street traffic.
Councillor, I do not have to be an engineer to understand the function of a works and parks yard
and to know that site was never suitable for the purpose.
Familiarity based on experience of the function of a works and parks yard is all that;s required to exercise sensible judgement. didn't get it overnight. It took fifty years to hone what I know into common sense decisions.
I simply have no confidence in the constantly changing kaleidoscope of figures provided at last night's meeting. Even less when it became obvious thr Mayor and key Councillors had already made a decision and were prepared to use the issue to degrade the authority of Council.
As far as I'm concerned this was one of the horrendously costly mistakes this Council was elected to reverse.
Who is it with the courage on behalf of the taxpayers we represent. to tell the Department of National Defense and Queen's York Rangers, the town's need is greater than yours ...you need to surrender the field?
I don't see anyone on this Council of Goodwill Ambassadors so eager to be all things to all people no matter the cost.
Since I am not the Chief of Toronto Police Department and I am more than one-time elected I believe I may claim the right to say on behalf of myself and the people I represent. I am profoundly disappointed without being told I have no right to sit at the Council table.
It was so cold last night, I enjoyed the hot coffee and thank you for bringing it to me.
Wednesday 8 January 2014
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7 comments:
Watching out for the big ticket items was one of the pledges of the newly elected Council. It simply didn't happen. From computers systems that may never even work to debates about treating our snow like they do in Ottawa to studies on top of studies. While the old Library site just sits and falls apart.
If the coffee was undrinkable, it must be the Town Hall water.
The property was bought because the "price was right"? What does that mean? Was it below market value? Was it that it just happened to be the price the town could only afford? Regardless the property that is priced "just right" has been bought. And now that the property isn't exactly the "right property" more money need to be spent. Sounds like someone needs a new realtor.
During the power failure, there were negative comments thrown about by a current councillor and former mayor on their Twitter accounts about how PowerStream did a poor job of communicating to the public - hard to do when the public has no power.
So, last night at 6:30pm - a mere 30 minutes before garbage can be technically put on the curb - Councillor Abel tweeted that garbage pickup will be delayed by 1 day. Driving this morning, most houses scheduled for pickup had their garbage outside.
How can this Town communicate with the residents? Not everyone tweets, facebooks, etc.
Piss-poor communications
"A new Joint Operation Centre wouldn't even be up for consideration had the Town maintained the old Hydro Building."
maybe correct... but... the reality of the situation is that is not an option, get over it and deal with the reality that exists today. There is no point crying of this spilt milk.
16:55
The town's communications have always been a weak spot. Well- staffed & well-paid. Christopher offered to give them some help & was rejected. It shouldn't be space-science but every little improvement takes forever. The result is that residents don't even bother checking the website. When streaming is possible, I never expect it to actually occur.
For example: communications said that streamed would be available for those who missed an evening -There is no streaming tape from the last meeting available.
13:56 - I am not talking about streaming.... A Town department makes a decision on Tuesday afternoon at 6:30pm that there will be no garbage pickup on Wednesday, it will be Thursday.
How many people saw Able's tweet? He has 583 followers - most are not residents. If we had a windy Wednesday there would have been Banners and Aurorans and Tim's coffee cups everywhere.
So, how do you communicate that to the residents? Ballard had his shorts in a knot because of Powerstream not getting the word out to residents that had no power. Maybe he needs to figure out how to tell people with power that their garbage is going to sit out for an extra 24 hours.
Here's an update.... I live in a Wednesday garbage pickup area.
No pickup Wednesday... it was too cold.
Thursday garbage picked up.... no blue box or green bin pick up.
Friday morning, blue boxes and green bin are still out there.
Forgot to mention, there was half-assed green bin pickup the previous week. The bags inside were frozen so they stuck inside and would not come out with the 2 second tilt the operator does. So, if they don't get picked up today, there will be close to 3 weeks of turkey bones, leftover mashed potato and stuffing in there. No wonder the raccoons are so big.
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