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by Andre Carrel on Tuesday May 14 2013
I am glad you can see that standing in a room making accusations would be downright stupid. Yet I fail to understand how you might think it is okay to do it in writing...
I am also glad that you believe that your concept of democracy absolves you of responsibility and puts it onto those you elect. Putting their lives, homes, and incomes at risk because of this newly bestowed responsibility.
I would love to understand how once one is elected, they instantly are all knowing and understanding. Able to dissect and understand the municipal act and all its nuances. I am certain Mr. Carrel can attest to the learning curve there.
Could it be possibly looked upon that an inexperienced council, looked to their administrator as having the final say as a safe way of doing things? That these people who have lived, worked, and bled here were possibly taken advantage of and aren't corrupt politicians. At least until proven guilty.
Not once have I condoned the breach in the municipal act, nor would I. All my point is that it would be nice if we used our powers of democracy for good not evil.. Burning the Mayor is not the answer here.
Waking the people, I will give that to you.... long over due...
Might I remind you we once had a BINDING citizen initiated referendum, the FIRST of its kind.. We the people let it go...... Just like we let the administrator take power from our elected officials...
Don't sons grow up to be misters, eventually, or do they remain "Hey, boy!" for the duration?
Lana's suggestion, with which you appear to agree (if I am not mistaken) is that a person has no grounds to complain about - or even question - a council decision unless one is prepared to run for council. Statements of the kind reflect a woeful ignorance of a representative democracy's essential principle.
A citizen of a democracy does not have to earn the right to question government. That right is there by virtue of a person's citizenship.
Elections do not impart rights, they impart responsibilities. A key responsibililty is to be accountable not only for the substance of decisions made, but also for the underlying rationale. It is the elected who are accountable to citizens, it is not the other way around. A big difference.
If no errors were committed, notwithstanding some rather serious questions, providing a step-by-step overview of the process by which contracts were awarded should not be a big deal for the mayor in his capacity as the municipality's Chief Executive Officer. If all is proper and done in compliance with policies and applicable laws, there is nothing to hide. It would clear up any misunderstandings and set the record straight.
I will agree with you, Mr. Profili, that standing in front of a crowd and accuse person X would not only be irresponsible, it would be downright stupid - and may well turn out to be costly. On the other hand, if errors were made (as the Mayor seems to acknowledge) citizens have a right to know the score. Not only what was done, but what steps have been taken, or are under consideration as a consequence of errors made. If actions were taken in contravention of the law or established contracts or policies, then council has a duty to take appropriate steps not only to prevent a repeat performance - and demonstrate to citizens how the new procedures will prevent a repeat performance - but also to inform citizens what actions have been taken, or are under consideration, to deal with the offending party.
That being said, a "water under the bridge" attitude and advice to "run for council if you don't like it" reflect an unbelievable ignorance. Councils are accountable to all citizens, even to nerds, not only to those whose names were included on past ballots.
This is an amazingly thoughtful, meaningful and exceptionally well articulated article. Thank you.
Don't call me Mr. Profili. I am not my father. Secondly insinuating that someone is corrupt is both classless and insulting.
I am glad you had fun at your meeting, but the problem started long before recent events. More likely associated with the policy changes that some of the more intellegent readers have cited.
If the clown show wants to change something, Lana is bang on. Pull your head out of...... The sand. As if you check the law, I am certain that if the Mayor were to stand infront of a room and state that someone has been corrupt and pointed fingers. Not only would he be guilty of slander, you may share the tab, when paying legal bills.
Please Joe don't tell us, who know the Highways are not maintained as well as they had been 10 years ago. Back then we had few contractors and we looked after all the town sites and the highways through to the Paulson Bridge. Number one you don't have enough experienced or trained employees to do what needs to be done. I have seen plow operators sanding when the highway should have been plowed first, sanding when sand was in no way needed, such as at mild temperatures and nearly dry road surfaces, what a waste, not plowing the centre which makes passing unsafe. I know the reason is to keep the driving lanes open but taking the centre is also important. It has to be lack of training or experience and not enough employees out on shift early enough. Some of your plow operators should avoid leaving large windrows of plowed snow on the highway where vehicles have to drive through, maybe finding a better place to turn around and lifting the plow would be a good idea. Yes, with a heavy snow storm it is tough to keep the roads safe and this is where the public have to realize when it is snowing an inch or more per hour the snow can build up fast.
Your signs have sure taken a beating this winter and we both know why.
How many regular employees do you have for Castleagar, Trail, Fruitvale and the Rossland area? Since 2003 as many as a dozen employees have retired, all with more than twenty five years of experience and maybe two positions have been filled.
We see how the winter is going, lets see how quick spring cleanup takes place, has been poor for the last few years.
Kootenay weather is often unpredictable. This is normal and expected for the Kootenays - Mr. Mottishaw should know this by now as they have had the contract to maintain our roads for a number of years.
The problem is that staffing levels are kept at a minimum until the "unusual" happens and they have to call out extra casual staff to deal with the "unexpected".
The bottom line is that Emcon does not have adequate resources to deal with the "unusual and unexpected" conditions in the Kootenays based on how they do business which has been to casualize the workforce.
When a significant snow fall happens there are trucks out there but the question is covering what expanse of area - there are not enough regular trucks or drivers to deal with the road conditions in a timely manner when the "unexpected" or "unusual" happens.
Sorry Mr. Mottishaw, your excuses are getting a bit old.
Please enlighten us, Mr. Profili, as to which of the comments in this thread are insulting or classless. The only negative, personal one here appears to be your own. If you don't reply with specifics, I think we'll all be able to draw our own conclusions.
And what was Mr. Granstrom standing up for last night? I honestly don't know.
Hold your tongue people until you hold office. No wonder there is no line up in town to occupy a council position. Insulting and classless, that is what Rossland is degrading its self too.
If you seek investigation, then do so in a professional manner. Don't start a witch hunt on a group of people or a person who has had the guts to stand up in front of the whole town and be counted.
Writing a comment in some paper insulting someone certainly should not count. There is a reason why tabloids are on the shelves at grocery stores, the internet is the new grocery store. Do your home work. Present it to council and let them fix the issue. Or carry it to the next level.
Billy Profili
Here's an article by the Telegraph's Andrew Bennett from last year that deals with this issue in a fairly thorough manner!
I find it interesting that since the privitization of the Highways Dept, our highway management is so poor. We have far less snow than when I grew up and much bigger and better highways. We also have had fluctuating temperatures for several years so the timing of salting etc. should be better understood by now.
Mr. Mottishaw seems to come across as very defensive in the matter when really a look at other similar conditions in other areas of B.C. would perhaps shed a little light on the situation. When the defensive card comes up, people stop listening and anger and frustration result.
I have been driving defensively all of my driving years and in all conditions. It is really deplorable that one has to think twice before making a specialist's appointment out of town in the winter as you don't know if you'll even get past Eholt or to the Paulson bridge.
I hope that as we boomers carry on, we needn't move from our small communities in the Boundary just because we fear that the highways will not be maintained well enough for us to travel out of town.
Seems Rossland taxpayers still have no satisfactory answers. Sounds like they need an independent investigation of the matter.
Well, it seems we got the full measure of Mayor Granstrom tonight. Rossland taxpayers were well represented at the meeting. Many clearly concerned residents crammed themselves into the small meeting room to ask numerous important and insightful questions. The Mayor wasn’t able to answer question after question. He simply didn’t know or was unwilling to share any details or facts regarding what had happened. His repeated answer was that “mistakes were made” or procedures may not have been followed – but couldn’t give specifics on which ones or why they weren’t followed. He also wasn’t able to say what improvements had been made and offered no commitment to support any additional improvements. He was given an amazing amount of good advice and suggestions from the attendees for regaining public trust and preventing the reoccurrence of this recent contracting debacle. However, in the end, he refused to commit to do anything further and expressed no interest in learning the many lessons that could be learned by a complete review of the systemic failures that occurred. When it was pointed out that improper tax IDs were used on invoices, he said he had no responsibility to take that any further nor to report professional misconduct of a former employee. So it appears it could be business as usual with a continuing lack of adequate oversight, enabled by our less than able Mayor.
I agree with you Kyra - outstanding things have been accomplished through the power of the internet! Our news sites are a part of that- providing independent news for readers, responsive to the community, and leading action and information for our communities!
Yet I still hear readers who value a printed paper over our sites, and that confuses me. Why are newspapers seen as more legitimate than the written word on the 'net? It seems that we are still not visible as "journalists" because we are on-line. FYI readers - a journalist is marked by their integrity and quality of their copy not by the mode with which they produce that copy.
More movements (Occupy, Idle no More, Anonymous initiatives) have sprung from the interconnectivity of the world wide web than one has seen through printed formats for many years. The Internet is catching fire and grabbing the attention of our communities everyday!
So yes, 2012 is one of the leading years when one can truly say that the Internet's power to engage and disseminate information has taken off!
Happy New year to all!
Here's a CBC story on the issue as of today. Apparently the mayor thinks there's no problem: "The issue itself is the project, and from the city’s perspective the project was completed and it's a wonderful project for sure.”
I think you may have overlooked the key question:
Is Council now prepared to reconsider the wisdom of its Delegation Bylaw? Can the council of a municipality the size of Rossland really be that busy that it is necessary for it to delegate "all of the powers, duties and functions of Council .... to make agreements respecting the City's activities, works or services" to its CAO?
How does a style of "go ahead, you do it" government measure up to democratic responsibility and accountability?
Will the ombudsman be present? The responsible provincial ministry? For that matter, will any higher authority than those who allegedly allowed this issue to arise in the first place?
The RCMP (in the person of Trail RCMP Sgt. Rob Hawton) have indicated this is less of a criminal issue than a procedural one. But there ARE procedural authorities. Have they been invited to this meeting?
What happened to checks and balances? Are the only people protecting Rosslanders the ones who were part of the process that allegedly allowed this concern to come to the fore in the first place?
I believe, if even part of the allegations made on this issue are true (and I make no claim to expertise on this front), that anything less than an immediate, intensive, and PUBLIC internal review of fiscal policy by the CIty of Rossland is an aggregious affront to the citizens thereof, and a gross violation of public trust.
I mean no disrespect to the dedicated and loyal public servants who did their jobs to the best of their ability while this alleged situation unfolded. And I'm sure there are many, many of same, who greatly outweigh those (if any exist) with malign intent. I believe most public servants are genuinely here to serve, and I applaud them.
But investigating this kind of allegation needs to be taken seriously, as a matter of public record, or we should all just write a blank cheque and hope for the best. It should be adjudicated by higher authorities who possess a legitimate claim to objectivity.
I think these are very much the times that require public action. If this was my city council, you can rest assured, there would not be a provincial or federal ministry which would not have heard from me by now.
We're potentially talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars raised, per force, from a comparatively small population. This IS a democracy, and its success or failure is determined by proceedings like this one. I sincerely hope many attend, and many participate, and few accept pat answers to complicated concerns.
That's just my two cents. And your thousands upon thousands of dollars.
Here are a few questions that people might consider asking tomorrow evening. Any others out there, please feel free to post them as comments to this story.
You are absolutely right. Social media has changed the way we see the world and how fast we see the world. Our perspective on world and local issues has changed drastically.
Unfortunately some world and local events such as crime. war, homelessness have remained unchanged but the some of the more local events like re-uniting pet owners have vastly improved.
Have a great New Year.
Bud
I'm not exactly sure what this type of contest really achieves, except a lot of advertising for the host of the contest. I'm getting really tired of these trite social media advertising "voting" schemes. If anyone really cared about it, they could hire firms in the developing world to vote for them. You can get 1000 likes for around $75 or less when you buy in bulk.
One could also argue that really cool ski towns would have residents too busy riding the pow to bother with online self-promotion at this time of year. And not that I think we shouldn't promote our fine mountain and town, but I can't help but think we've lost our mojo when on the biggest pow days of recent years the first thing I read on the snow report greeting on the Red website is a plug for this lame contest instead of gushing about the amazing snow and encouraging people to take the day off work to go riding.
I know it was just before X-mas, but I was astounded at the lack of crowds the weekend before X-mas. People definitely have the wrong priorities when they're out shopping for gifts that probably aren't required and will still be available next week, when mother nature was gifting us with something so much more joyful and ephemeral.
I agree with you Andrew. To have the chance to see an animal such as a wolverine in the southern part of BC, and that close to a city, is realy unique. As I stated above in my comment, though the wolverine doesnot get much in the way of press coverage in the north, most residents who travelled the winter roads up north would see lots of them. They are not a danger to any human unless you corner it or try to become too friendly and reach out to pet it. They are not the vicious stalker and killers of humans and grizzly bears as the movies and tall tale stories try to indicate.
When I chased oil and gas rigs in North Eastern BC; Fort Nelson, we would see these animals quite frequently. Though they are elusive and very much a loner animal, they used to come fairly close to our crews when we threw pieces of raw meat out for them. I might add that wolverines are not as rare or as vicious as some biologists and tall tales claim. As with the so called vanishing lynx, we would see wolverines and lynx three and four times per week when driving on the winter back roads. They prey on baby foxes, rabbits, trapper’s traps and about anything else that offers easy flesh. Though I have never had the honour, one of my welder’s helper had a wolverine curl up on his lap and have a nap after he had been feeding it daily for a week. It was a younger male and seemed to trust my helper to the fullest. As with most wild animals, if you don’t give it reason to be defensive around you, they will become comfortable and relaxed in the presence of humans and pose little threat.
I might add, that a fox and lynx are very easily tamed and will feed out of your hands and sleep at your feet after less than a week’s contact. Both a fox and a lynx have the characteristic traits of a house cat and will play with you in the same fashion that a cat does.
Quite bold of a MP to comment on provincal politics while struggling to find anything local to fight for. A.A. needs to find voices from our communities instead of being a mouthpiece for party, union and special interests.
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Listen to these calls for more government and more taxation. Is this to be a one way conversation? Many of us are paying taxes, income, property, sales taxes, government fees until June 6th (tax freedom day). Paying less tax does matter to many many people.
Listen more to these confused laments over provincal debt - as if tax relief is the cause. And we're offered anguished arguments against austerity and against responsible levels of government. Indebtedness is ignored.
People call for more taxation of corporations while turning a blind eye to benefits from energy and natural resource royalties. This approach to tax planning ignores economic foundation of the province: wealth creation is fought and entitlements featured.
And, we're told government still isn't big enough. Anyone else catch the recent story that the AVERAGE federal public servant cost taxpayers $114,000/yr?
The entitlement sector - white collar workers - extorts the wealth of a nation AND our MP tells us-taxpayers that we aren't doing our bit to fund the effort.
HAH. back to parties at parks etc
Canadians deserve not to be overtaxed to support increasing bureaucracies. Enough already!
The first failed prohibition was the apple in the Garden of Eden.
Some people NEVER learn, especially if they are from a poorly educated, extensively brainwashed sector of our society like the police.Their opinion has zero value.
The prohibition on marijuana makes even less sense than the stupid idea of prohibiting alcolhol. If you want gangs to be rich and powerful prohibition is the way to do it. I guess the police like gangs that way. Wake up coppers