Saturday, February 3, 2007

The Sentiment Against A Change to the General Vote is Growing!

Here is a series of communications I have received from an Oshawa resident that is typical of the sentiment surrounding Council’s attempts to return to the dark days of the General Vote in Oshawa. I have not as yet met this writer but know that I can count on the support of her, her family, and friends. The sentiment against the change runs deep in Oshawa.

We hope that everyone is working as hard as Josie is to insure the council is not able to implement the “self-serving” general vote that will give politicians a seat until their death or resignation…not the way to bring vibrant leadership to Oshawa.

We need politicians that are accountable to their ward voters in solving their neighbourhood problems and able to represent the ideas of their community strongly on city council. We don’t need politicians that will be able to “retire” under the general vote but continue to collect the handsome benefits of their council seat.

These communications are reprinted in the order in which they occurred and are reprinted with the permission of the author.



From: pjpascoe
To: bill_longworth@hotmail.com
Subject: Meeting Date: Tue, 27 Feb 2007 14:33:10 -0500

Mr. Longworth

I was wondering if you know when the public meeting was going to be. I have been checking our lowly Oshawa This Week carefully but have not seen anything as yet. We will probably be as well informed about it as we were regarding the referendum question being included on our recent ballots. If more information was given about the Ward System question I'm sure there would have been more than 25% voter turnout. (A 60% yes vote of 25% of the citizens is not a clear statement)

This meeting seems useless anyway if we will only be discussing keeping the Wards as they are but still having a general vote. Doesn't make sense to a lot of people I have talked to.

I see now a lot of candidates who didn't make the cut in our latest election have thrown their hat into the ring for the one School Board Trustee position. They just have to get in there so their name will be seen in time for our next election without the Ward system. That's pretty pathetic, I'm sure they have a real concern for the education system.

A more important issue for our Council is to have a Steven Colbert Day in Oshawa. Its pretty embarrassing to live in a city where a comedian, not even from here, gets a day named after him.

What a great city we have here on the lake, NO marina, NO daily newspaper and now NO Ward system. The councillors made a wise choice in the new logo for us "Prepare to be amazed" , we certainly have been and we never cease to be amazed.

Why would a city of our size go backwards in time instead of going forward. It is Amazing!!

I hope I didn't miss that meeting as I do support all you efforts.

Josie Pascoe (& Phil Pascoe)




Quoting Bill Longworth bill_longworth@hotmail.com

Hi Josie...you haven't missed the meeting. the council will send a flyer via canada post to all residences announcing the time, date, purpose, location...but no background information.

I think the meeting will be an exercise in futility but still would encourage you to attend if possible to express your ideas. I will be there getting people to sign petitions and hopefully a lot of help will be there for that purpose.

I will also be publicizing the date of the meeting on oshawaspeaks.ca but I think the council members have already made up their mind on the issue.

I still expect to be able to appeal to the OMB because there are 2 other avenues of appeal that the city has not considered that I will use as grounds of appeal once they have approved the bylaw. No appeal is possible until then. I am keeping the oshawa appeal routes close to my chest at the moment because i do not want council to block them with any action prior to the passage of the bylaw.

I am confident that we will have an appeal and I am confident of winning and I am confident that the people of Oshawa will punish the pushers of the general vote at the next election.

We do intend to keep our blog active throughout this term of council and are confident that it will grow to be the dominant news source for commenting on council business.

Would I have permission to publish your letter with some remarks of my own as a posting on oshawaspeaks.ca?

Thank you for your support on this important issue. Hopefully you have been able to forward our website to all of the contacts in your email address book.

Bill Longworth,
Founder & Chair of VOTES (Vote to Eliminate Self Serving Politicians)
www.oshawaspeaks.ca
159 Spirea Court,
Oshawa, Ontario
L1G6S8

905 579 3971




Message received on March 1, 2007

Hi Bill

I talk to everyone I know about this issue and so does my 85 year old mother and we urge them to speak out. You may use my letter to help the cause and I will be out to the meeting to support you. I cannot uderstand what has gotten into our council these past few years. I honestly think it has to be senility.

Many thanks again for your hard work.

Josie Pascoe

No comments: