Welcome Back From Your Taxpayer-funded HolidayCouncillors

While Oshawa is suffering record unemployment and job losses, extended GM summer closings and the potential shuttering of GM, the highest taxes in the GTA, and a train wreck, many of our councillors have been holidaying at our expense in Whistler, British Columbia.

They were there to attend the June 4-8 National Conference of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM). Of course they would have flown out a few days earlier and stayed a few days after to provide a decent holiday of sightseeing beyond what was provided by the conference. They would want to make the most of it as the holiday and expensive accommodation and transportation was paid for by Oshawa taxpayers who scraped together the tax dollars out of their empty pockets to pick up the politician's holiday tab.

While in Whistler, our councilors no doubt took advantage of every learning opportunity provided by the conference.

To be really valuable at this conference, our councilors should have organized a seminar showing their fellow municipal politicians across the country how to ram the general vote into their citizen’s throats as our city politicians did to guarantee their re-election and future attendance at many of these taxpayer paid FCM holiday junkets across the country. They could have counselled their fellow municipal politicians to design an incomprehensive plebiscite question designed to solicit the desired answer from unsuspecting voters and then keep the question secret to catch voters cold in the voting booth and refuse to provide voters information about the question so they could understand what they were voting for. They could have counselled politicians from across the country the strategy of how to introduce Oshawa’s new voting system that is not used in any large jurisdiction in the country. It goes without saying, of course, that the Oshawa’s system is not used because it is undemocratic, unrepresentative, and unaccountable, produces an unproductive council utilizing an incomprensible ballot with upwards of the names of 75-80 candidates for city-wide elections.

Instead of this valuable service, no doubt our politicians took advantage to take “study tours” featured on the conference program to the Olympic Sport Venues including the Whistler Sliding Centre which will host the bobsled, luge, and skeleton events, the Whistler Olympic/Paralympic Park which will host the biathlon, cross country and ski jumping events, Whistler Creekside which will host the downhill skiing events, the athletes village, a slideshow/video presentation about a 430-day Antarctic scientific mission (not an Arctic Mission which would have at least been relevant to Canadians), and enjoyed a gondola or quad chair ride to the top of Whistler or Blackcomb mountain to enjoy a casual evening buffet of west coast cuisine and local entertainment (to insure our city politicians didn’t get bored, they were also able to traverse back and forth between the mountains in just 11 minutes on the new Peak 2 Gondola to enjoy the breathtaking views from both mountains),

Additional tours with extra costs were organized to Ancient Cedars Hike ($135), a driving and hiking tour to explore some local waterfalls ($135), a Squamish First Nations Cultural Centre Tour ($23), a Zipline eco-tour ($145), a tree-trek canopy tour ($50), a Whistler Village walking tour ($13), a Lillooet Canoe tour ($135), an ATV wilderness tour ($147), a Whistler Art Tour ($33), and a Horseback Western Ride ($100). By golly, with all of the banquets, tours, and activities, there was hardly any time for serious business. But hey, our tax dollars have to treat our politicians well don’t they?

So you might be interested to know which of our city politicians took advantage of our largesse to entertain themselves on this junket. I shall find out for sure soon along with all of their expenses charged to city taxpayers but I did send an email to all city politicians asking if they were attending this conference, whether they were being accompanied by a spouse/significant other, and who was footing the bill. I also asked if they were going to write a report on this conference on their return documenting the new information they gleaned to introduce to Oshawa to provide taxpayer value for subsidizing the trip.

I received responses from John Neal, Robert Lutczyk, April Cullen, Brian Nicholson, John Gray and John Henry, all of whom stated they were not attending the conference….Good for them!

The others, Nestor Pidwerbecki, Joe Kolodzie, Louise Parkes, Tito Dante Marimpietri, and Maryanne Sholdra did not respond to my email. I must therefore assume one of two things…1) They attended the conference but wanted to keep it a secret as best they could, or 2) They do not respect Oshawa taxpayers enough to respond to legitimate queries from them. The truth will be discovered soon! I shall file a freedom of information request to establish who attended and the costs for each that has been billed to the Oshawa taxpayer.

LivCom Awards---Access to Information Request

As reported in an earlier post, Oshawa spent a reported $30,000 of taxpayer money to enter the 2007 Liveable Communities Contest held from Nov. 22-26 in London, England.

I am pleased to have raised this as an issue at my city council presentation on Nov. 26 and in stories on this blog and am happy to see that the Oshawa Express has also jumped aboard the wastage on this issue. I wonder why Oshawa This Week has not seen fit to see this contest for what it is...an absolute waste of taxpayer's money!

I dispute the fact that they could fit everything they did in regards to this contest for the allocated $30,000 and thus filed an Access to Information Request to the city clerk on Tuesday, January 8. I have attached a 6 page breakdown of requested costs to the city's Freedom of Information Form and the city is compelled to respond with the "truthful" figures within 30 days according to Provincial Law.

Keeping our burgeoning tax increases in check in the face of escalating “apparent” budget shortfalls gave rise to calls for service cutbacks, increased fees for the use of city recreational facilities which potentially would have excluded many youngsters from healthy physical activity thus putting them on the street to "idle" away their time in an age when there is growing national concern about increasing child obesity, increased fees for animal adoptions which may require the euthanasia of greater numbers of animals, huge increases to administrative "fines" for such things as bylaw officers, animal control officers, etc., it seems hardly sensible to spend one cent on a "meaningless" awards program which was the brainchild of some cloistered and distant entrepreneurial spirit.

At the end of the day because of the popularity of the recreational programs and an overwhelming attendance of interested program providers and volunteers at the council meeting, and despite the obviously politically inspired giant staff report at the link above, increased recreational fees were “deep-sixed” FOR NOW, but the fee increases potentially resulting in more animal euthanasia and increased administrative “fines” for bylaw infractions all passed because opposition to these measures was not as strongly organized and represented.

While the council once again cries poor to justify massive tax increases, they could get their budgets and their burgeoning debt more in order by cutting out wasteful frills such as monies spent on the LivCom Awards. The monies spent on this ludicrous contest could well go to such worthwhile programs as keeping the price of animal adoptions down so that more healthy animals could go to good homes rather than being euthanized.

As we believe communication should start at home, it seems doubly outrageous to spend money on communicating the fine features of Oshawa to the world when city council repeatedly voted to deny Oshawa citizens information about the recent plebiscite question. While it was not at all important to ask the question, having asked it, they made an issue where none existed and had a responsibility to fully inform people about it. Surprisingly, though, the Mayor stated it was not the city's responsibility to do so.

The city entry to the LivCom contest surely is a bizarre, harebrained, daffy, incredible, and unbelievable misplacement of priorities and tax dollars for a city that is already the highest assessed municipality in the GTA. This is just another example of how the City of Oshawa's superfluous and extravagant spending "balloons" in relation to their ability to "squeeze" extra taxes from their already "bleeding" ratepayers.

It is well known that men are from mars...and women are from venus...but it appears that our "outer-space" politicians...both men and women who supported this ludicrous LivCom wastage must be from "far out" Uranus.