VOTESVote To EliminateSelf-Serving Politicians: General vs. Ward Vote Meeting, April 19, 2007, 7:00 pm, Sikorski Hall

VOTES chooses Political Campaign Theme

Oshawa VOTES political party has declared its intention to run a slate of candidates to contest the next municipal election. We have declared
"WE PROMISE" as our campaign theme. Our website will be www.WePromise.ca

While the party will have a wide-ranging platform, it's first order of business will be in returning ward voting to Oshawa.

Another major goal will be in defeating Mayor Gray and Councillors Pidwerbecki, Parkes, Marimpietri, Henry, Kolodzie, and Sholdra all of whom voted to rob you of your local ward representatives by replacing ward voting with the less accountable and less democratic
"General Vote". They wanted a "self-serving" electoral system that served them rather than the people of Oshawa.

In addition to a platform of "positives" our team will develop, we will be reminding the public of the growing collection of "negatives" identified below under the item--Oshawa City Council
"Hall of Shame". The Oshawa public, however, is invited to contact us to suggest additional isses you think we should consider.

Fortunately the general vote will make the task easier for the VOTES party as our team will be able to concentrate on one city-wide campaign rather than on seven ward campaigns.

This site is now accessible from www.wepromise, www.timetoupgrade.ca, www.oshawavotes.ca , www.oshawaspeaks.ca, www.oshawavotes.com, and www.oshawaspeaks.com

TOP TEN QUOTES BY CITY POLITICIANS

1. "The city had no responsibility to inform the public about the referendum question"--Mayor John Gray (City Council Mtg., April 10, 2007)

2. "I've never heard of a government informing people about a plebiscite question."--Councillor Joe Kolodzie (City Council Mtg., April 10, 2007)

3. "Our half million dollar loss at the GM Center actually puts us $700,000 above the $1.2 million loss at the Civic."--Mayor John Gray's "spin" on first year taxpayer losses of new GM Place (December 07 interview with CHEX TV's Dan Carter's "First Take LIVE) overlooking borrowing costs for GM Center which didn't exist for the Civic.

4. FULL LIST UNDER CONSTRUCTION

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MEDIA COVERAGE OF WARD/GENERAL VOTE ISSUE

Tuesday, March 6, 2007

General vs. Ward Vote Meeting, April 19, 2007, 7:00 pm, Sikorski Hall

I have been forwarded the following email which gave advance notice today to city politicians and senior city hall officials of the date of the “PUBLIC MEETING” to receive citizen input in regards to the city bylaw to revert to the general vote for the election of members of city council.

“From: Sandra Kranc
Sent: Monday, March 05, 2007 3:28 PM
To: Bob Duignan; Rick Stockman; Tom Hodgins; Stan Bertoia; April Cullen; Brian Nicholson; Joe Kolodzie; John Gray; John Henry; John Neal; Louise Parkes; Maryanne Sholdra; Nester Pidwerbecki; Robert Lutczyk; Tito-Dante Marimpietri
Cc: Kim Bressan; Jennifer Allan; Percy Luther; Lon Knox; Mary Medeiros
Subject: Public Meeting - General Vote
This email is to provide advance notice that the public meeting on the general vote method of election will take place on Thursday, April 19, 2007 at 7:00 p.m. at the General W. Sikorski Polish Veterans’ Hall. You will receive official advance notice later this week with your regular courier/mail delivery, but thought you may like to know at this time in case you receive any enquiries.
Sandra.

Please put the date, April 19, 2007 at 7:00 p.m. at Sikorski Hall on your calendar as it is important that the hall be full if we are to avoid the undemocratic general vote.

This change cannot be justified in any way by any student of municipal politics. It will give a constituency to each city politician about twice the size of that of our federal and provincial members thus taking the government designed to be closest to the people further away than either our provincial MPP or our federal MP. It will take away ward representation thus depriving you of a politician especially elected by residents of your ward to look after ward concerns and represent your ward interests on council. It will produce an unwieldy ballot of 50-60 candidates which will make it impossible to make informed choices. It will take all local campaigning away from your local community so that ward issues are not debated in your local church basements and school auditoriums. It will isolate Oshawa voters away from members of council. All candidates will campaign city wide and any election forums will be reduced to huge meetings where huge numbers of candidates will be given about 2 minutes each to express their platforms to voters. It will result in a council over time all residing in a few of the richer areas of Oshawa leaving most of the city unrepresented and disenfranchised. The only benefit—it guarantees re-election of incumbents. All of the above was Oshawa’s devastating history with the general vote prior to 1985.

Don’t let it happen again! Don’t let Oshawa politicians revert to a system of municipal elections virtually unused in Canada. If the general vote was better, wouldn't you think it would be used virtually everywhere?

Mark April 19th on your calendar and plan to attend this meeting. It’s all the better if you also express your opinion orally at the meeting.

Oshawa’s future is in your hands.

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MANDATE OF OSHAWA SPEAKS

The basic mandate of this site is to retain ward voting for Oshawa.

Oshawa City Council has voted to return to the “city-wide" or general vote for the election of members of Oshawa City Council which will make the City of Oshawa the largest city in the "free world" to use this electoral system without the use of civic political parties which are at present prohibited by Ontario's "Municipal Elections Act."

Oshawa incumbent politicians are the biggest beneficiaries of the change yet recent changes to Ontario Municipal Law (Bill 130) prevents their “self-serving” decision from being appealed to any higher government or independent tribunal. This sets a very dangerous precedent for all other potentially undemocratic and self-serving councils in the Province to emulate.

The General Vote will produce a local government that is less accountable, less inclusive, less representative, less responsive, less diverse, and less democratic and because of these problems is not being used in any large center anywhere in the country. If it was a better system, wouldn’t it be widely used?

Under the general vote, the ballot will contain the names of upwards of 80 to 90 candidates for "city-wide" election to the various offices presenting an impossible task for informed voting. To make the "General Vote" workable, civic political parties are required to simplify voter choices and to retain political accountability.

In a democracy, political accountability is directly related to voter’s ability to defeat politicians but Oshawa's history with the general vote prior to ward voting introduced in 1985 was that out of 109 contested positions in the preceding 7 general vote councils, not one politician was defeated by the vote. All change took place through the death or resignation of members.

The General Vote cloistered all voting power in a few of the wealthier areas of Oshawa with more than half of the members residing in North Oshawa (the old ward 6) and three residing in one polling subdivision of about 100 houses at the east end of Regent Drive.The General Vote left huge areas of the city disenfranchised, unrepresented, unserviced, and forgotten on City Council.

This lack of attention to vast areas of the city led to a reputation as an “unprogressive” and “undesirable” place which depressed housing prices and caused the exodus of quality home builders. We do not want to regress to those days.

The General Vote will give politicians constituency sizes twice the size of those of our Federal and Provincial Government Representatives thus taking our local government members further from the people. Their vastly inflated constituencies will give rise to calls for increased salary, increased staff, increased office space, increased budgets, etc. all leading to escalating costs of our local government.

The biggest argument advanced by proponents of the General Vote is that it makes every city politician responsible to the whole city. Think about that. Apply it to your work. If everyone in your work was responsible for everything, who would be responsible for anything? The General Vote will produce rudderless political leadership for Oshawa.

Politicians will do what the system demands for re-election. The General Vote makes all politicians competitors for the same city-wide vote and success depends upon high name recognition. In order to promote their name, council members will backbite, bitch, bicker, and grandstand to grab the press all at the expense of real productivity. Ward Voting depends upon service to the people in the community that politicians represent. If the politician provides unsatisfactory representation, he/she will be replaced so the motivation is to serve the people. Which system would serve you best?

In acquiring the campaign funds and votes to get elected in a General Vote, politicians will become less accountable to the citizens and more accountable to political donors like developers as well as large organizations like trade unions, churches, the golf club, etc. which have the potential to influence their city-wide membership to vote for favored politicians. In addition they may be less wary about supporting the desires of their donors if the election system makes them less accountable to voters. Where does that place the needs and the problems of the ratepayer and homeowner whose neighborhood problem will produce few votes of the 25,000 or so needed for election?

Thus the general vote takes away voting power from ordinary citizens, takes away local community representation, reduces political responsibility and accountability for representing the interests of individual citizens and their specific neighborhood concerns and gives this political power to large organizations and political donors. How is that serving the interests of Oshawa residents and ratepayers?

But the real problem…while governments everywhere in the free world are interested in communicating important information to their electorate, Oshawa City Council took planned and deliberate action to keep the plebiscite issue from the people as the Mayor argued it wasn’t city hall’s responsibility to communicate any of this information to their public! Information is the basic pillar of democracy…and yet the mayor says City Council had no responsibility to inform. Amazing! Perhaps this is the first sign of the lack of accountability accruing from the general vote. Politicians can do anything to the people if they can't be defeated!

So the Mandate of this site?

1) Inform Oshawa voters of City Council’s irresponsible and undemocratic actions and work to retain ward voting for Oshawa.

2) Run a Slate of Candidates in the next municipal elections to replace Mayor Gray, Councillors Pidwerbecki, Kolodzie, Parkes, Henry, Sholdra, and Marimpietri all of whom voted for the “self-serving” General Vote.

3) The Oshawa Votes Slate of strong results oriented individuals will pledge to return ward voting to Oshawa as its first order of business as well to re-organize city committee structures to bring real change and progress to Oshawa. These "results-oriented" changes will be announced as part of the VOTES Election Platform.

4) Before the next election, work for legislative change to allow for Municipal Political Parties if Oshawa’s General Vote Bylaw is allowed to stand.

5) To be a “watchdog” over all actions of this council because of their proven irresponsibility and self-serving actions.

VOTES chooses Political Campaign Theme

FAVORITE LINKS

BLOG ARCHIVES

TOP TEN QUOTES BY CITY POLITICIANS

OSHAWA CITY COUNCIL "HALL OF SHAME"--UNDER CONSTRUCTION

JOIN OUR COMMUNITY

CONTACT THE POLITICIANS

WRITE MEDIA LETTERS

MEDIA COVERAGE OF WARD/GENERAL VOTE ISSUE

OSHAWA & AREA POLITICAL BLOGS

OSHAWA CITY COUNCIL AGENDAS/MINUTES

OSHAWA INFORMATION

About the Author---Bill Longworth

Tuesday, March 6, 2007

General vs. Ward Vote Meeting, April 19, 2007, 7:00 pm, Sikorski Hall

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MANDATE OF OSHAWA SPEAKS