Louise Parkes says this is defamatory and has crossed the line!

Below is an item published on the O'Neill Community Facebook site. A courtesy copy was sent to Councillor Louise Parkes.

The facebook item was accompanied by the following introductory note to Councillors Louise Parkes and John Henry both of which have been avid supporters of Oshawa's return to the general vote which will take away your local ward politicians and make all politicians less accountable to voters---

"Hi John and Louise...just a social visit

Just thought you'd like to know that I started this new site for members of the O'Neill Collegiate Community and thought you might be interested in checking it out.

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2325928775

You might want to change your vote to reject the general vote so that this information does not spread too broadly.

Facebook is designed so that once it gets loose in a community, it spreads like wildfire as it is extremely easy for readers to sign up all of the contacts in their address books and it is the new "HOT" site.

As this site grows, i will be able to send a message to every member's email with one click of a button.

We will work on promoting this site among the O'Neill Community shortly.

If you change your vote, you will save me the trouble of promoting this site and you the loss of support both city-wide and in the O'Neill Community.

This is a site for everyone in the community to express their views and so it won't be so time-demanding on me.

In the meantime you will want to check the site regularly to see what is being said by me...and by members of the O'Neill Community.

Isn't the internet great?

Cheers!"

At the April 30th Council meeting following my presentation, She says this information is defamatory and "crosses" the line of reason". She says this information constitutes threats and intimidation. Can you believe?



Is it now defamatory and crossing the line of reason to let voters know how politicians are voting?

Is communicating a politician's voting record to the public a threat and intimidation?

I think not! I think it is necessary.

Public information about politician's votes is only threatening and intimidating to them if they don't have the courage of their convictions and want to keep the public in the dark!

Politicians are our servants and it is our democratic right to know how they vote.

The O'Neill Facebook article in question follows--

The Crunch is here!

Oshawa City Council will be passing their bylaw to introduce the general vote to Oshawa at the regular council meeting 6:30 pm, this coming Monday evening, March 30.

Both your city councillors, John Henry and Louise Parkes are supporting the general vote which will take your local area representative away from you. In the event of a problem in your neighbourhood, there will be no politician directly responsible and accountable to you and your neighbours.

Therefore, Monday nights meeting is important for all to attend who want to preserve democracy in Oshawa.

Democracy means a "real" vote that has a say in determining your political leadership.

Democracy means guaranteeing a voice for your community on city council.

Democracy means an inclusive system that gives equal opportunity to citizens from all parts of the city, with all levels of financial wealth, and with all ethnic backgrounds to have a fair and equal chance to seek a seat on council.

Democracy means that people of all demographic groups will be equally heard.

Democracy means the ability to remove councillors from office who are not representing your interests.

Democracy means that politicians are accountable to the citizens.

Democracy means that the political systems serves the people, not the politicians.

Democracy means that there is a politician that you've elected who is responsible to you to listen to your concerns.

Democracy means all these things...that council is wanting to take away.

It is amazing in this day and age in Canada, of all things, we are seeing the erosion of our democratic rights.

We need you to stock city hall with all of your friends, relatives, neighbours, and associates on Monday night to show the politicians we won't stand for this.

It is our last chance to show council that we won't stand for the erosion of our democratic and Canadian rights.

While attendance is important, you can watch the proceedings on Rogers Cable starting at 6:30 pm if it is impossible for you to attend.

VOTES chair, Bill Longworth, is scheduled as a delegation on your behalf.

Bill Longworth,
Founder & Chair of VOTES (Vote to Eliminate Self Serving Politicians)
www.oshawaspeaks.ca

Oshawa’s Self-Serving Politicians

Your Oshawa City Council has voted to implement the general vote for the election of members of Oshawa City Council. This means that all members of city council will be elected city-wide the same way mayors are across the country.

There are serious implications of this to you as a citizen. You will no longer vote for ward politicians to look after the interests of your community. If you have a community problem that you want addressed, there are no specific politicians accountable to you and your neighbors.

In the past, if you became dissatisfied with your ward politicians, this dissatisfaction is something probably shared with your community, and the politician would be replaced.

For example, the residents of North Simcoe Street became dissatisfied with politicians’ moves to “protect” the street from any development or changes to existing residential architecture there. Residents saw this as interference with their property interests which would affect their property values. They also saw it as interference in their right to modify their residences. Thus they defeated Councilor Cathy Clarke and replaced her with Councilor John Henry. Under the general vote, this would not be possible as politicians are elected city-wide.

Councilor Henry benefitted from this “power” of ward voting but he has since been a strident supporter of the General Vote which means that he no longer is responsible for any neighborhood and cannot be defeated in the same way that he was able to defeat his predecessor.

It is interesting that Councilor Henry has turned his back on the system that gave him political success in favor of one that assures his continued seat on council. By supporting the change, he is also turning his back on the voters of his community who placed their trust in him.

Councilor Henry was joined by Mayor John Gray and Councilors Parkes, Pidwerbecki, Kolodzie, Sholdra, and Marimpietri in voting to take away your local community political representation. They have adopted a system virtually unused in Canada which will make Oshawa the largest city in Canada using the General Vote without also the use of political parties.

As citizens, we have to work to defeat these politicians who have proven that they are more interested in their own interests rather than the interests of the citizens of Oshawa.

If the general vote made sense, wouldn’t it be widely used across the country?

While Municipal Government is supposed to be the government closest to the people, Oshawa politicians have taken our local government farther away than either the Provincial or Federal governments since our local politicians will have constituencies almost twice the size of those of our Provincial or Federal Members.

Politicians like the General Vote because it provides them far more protection from political defeat even though they may support very unpopular positions.

Because politicians are no longer responsible to the individual citizens and individual neighborhoods whose voting power is insufficient to remove them, politicians start to serve “new masters” who can deliver more votes to allow significant growth toward the 25,000 votes or so they require for election.

So what do they do? Their “masters” now become the large organizations and groups who can influence their city-wide members to support the politicians who “are friends of the group”.

Politicians can also support development proposals of those who would donate to their campaigns with far more immunity than they had under ward elections.

In all ways, the change to the general vote is self-serving for the politicians.

And all of this time, we thought politicians were supposed to serve us!

Wake up Oshawa! Get active and do something about this!

We have to start now to defeat the politicians who have voted to serve themselves rather than serve us.

What are you going to do to help bring “responsible” politicians to our city council?

Not an Oshawa Politician to be found!

As reported in the post below, Mayor Gray and Councillors April Cullen, Tito Dante Marimpietri, Nester Pidwerbecki, Joe Kolodzie and Robert Lutczyk were all in Calgary attending the annual conference of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities recently. I happened to be in Calgary at the same time and so thought I'd say hello to some of those attending.

I checked McDonald's at lunch time...no Oshawa politicians there. I checked Wendy's...no Oshawa politicians there. I checked Burger King...no Oshawa politicians there. Getting frustrated, I checked Swiss Chalet but no Oshawa politicians there. Even though there were lots of municipal politicians from across the country hanging out on 8th Avenue (the Downtown Walking Mall and center location for the conference) I just couldn't find our politicians anywhere.

I knew they'd love to see me to chat and say hello...so I continued looking.

I stayed at the Econo Lodge in the Motel Village of Calgary and didn't see any of our politicians there or indeed in the other dozen or so motels on the strip. This would have been a great location because the Banff Trail Station for the Calgary Light Rail Transit System is right there and stops at the back door of the conference center hotel.

Not finding our politicians anywhere, I checked the posh Hyatt Regency Downtown which was the central conference location but didn't see any politicians in the posh lobby of this hotel where the rooms ranged from $309 to $1500 (plux tax) per night.

If our politicians stayed at this "regal" hotel, I know they would have doubled up on these rooms to save our precious tax dollars for valuable Oshawa projects.

They wouldn't take advantage of bellying up to the trough and ordering from the right hand (price) column in restaurants and hotels would they?....Not our politicians who have recently voted to implement the general vote so that they can guarantee their council seats. They wouldn't want to enjoy millionaire-type hospitality at our expense, would they?

While I couldn't find any of our politicians, I doubt whether they would be spending their time with city charge cards in the fancy restaurants or inebriating in an Oshawa hospitality suite sharing the fruits of our tax dollars with politicians across the country.

Hopefully none of our politicians took the liberty of using those city charge cards to rent a car for the hour or so drive to feast at Banff or Lake Louise at our expense...and more importantly by so doing missing valuable conference sessions.

After all, they had a big fight to keep our tax increase this year at JUST 3.9%. So obviously they are VERY CONCERNED about any frivolous spending.

Maybe I'll try to get the Oshawa politicians expense records for this conference just to prove to you, loyal reader, how frugal and responsible our politicians are with our hard earned tax dollars.

I am also anxious to read the "conference reports" submitted from our politicians so that they can share all they learned with the public and with the five councillors who did not attend this conference. I expect that these reports will be tabled at the next council meeting.

And by the way, I would assume our politicians flew economy rather than business class, wouldn't you?

Request for Expense Reports

Mr. B. Duignan,
Oshawa City Manager,
Oshawa City Hall

Dear Sir:

Mayor Gray and Councillors Cullen, Marimpietri, Pidwerbecki, Kolodzie, and Lutczyk all attended the recent 70th Annual Conference of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities held in Calgary in early June.

I am interested in securing the individual expense records of those who attended including air fare, accommodation expense, food expense, entertainment expense, hospitality expense, car rental expense, city charge card expense, and any general hospitality and/or miscellaneous expense accruing to the city in general as a result of this conference.

Please advise how I might secure these records.

Bill Longworth,
Chairman/Founder VOTES,
159 Spirea Court,
Oshawa

So What’s Next?

Councilor Sholdra asked me, “So what are you going to do now Bill?” as a question following my presentation to Oshawa City Council on April 30, 2007...

A good question! So here is my analysis of what actions will be taken by both city council and by the VOTES group as a result of Oshawa City Council adopting a move to the general vote at their April 30th meeting.


Actions by Oshawa City Council

1) In short order Oshawa politicians will claim that their workload has increased now that they are responsible for the entire city under the general vote and will demand a significant salary increase more in line with the pay and perks of our provincial and federal politicians.

2) Because of their claims of increased workload, they will demand more staff to handle the demands of their city hall political office.

3) City Hall has been revamped in recent years to provide palatial office space for city council members. They will demand more space now to house their increased staff and office space and furnishings more in line with their new “executive” responsibilities.

4) City politicians will demand more in the way of “communication” budgets to keep citizens informed city-wide. These communications will help ward politicians raise their city-wide profiles at taxpayer expense to insure their election under the general vote system.

5) In short order, politicians will recognize that they are all competitors for the same city-wide vote and thus council will become very fractious and unproductive.

6) Oshawa municipal politicians will be quite unresponsive to community concerns devoting their efforts to the needs of large groups and organizations in the city that have the capacity to deliver bloc votes city-wide and of course developers who will fund their campaigns.

The result? Higher costs to the taxpayer...less productivity on the part of politicians...and real estate loses to all homeowners as a "do-nothing" council makes Oshawa a "less desirable place to live. As a less desireable community, developers of high level development will avoid Oshawa like the plague, thus compounding the problems. The resultant stagnated real estate market will result in market losses to all homeowners!



Actions by the VOTES Group

1) We will continue to look at the possibility of court challenges to Oshawa City Council’s irresponsible and undemocratic plebiscite strategy in minimizing information to voters before the question was asked.

2) We will immediately start recruiting candidates to represent the VOTES party in the next municipal election. Those recruited will have campaign responsibility starting immediately. Anyone who feels strongly that the ward system must be retained in Oshawa and wants to volunteer time to our efforts is encouraged to contact Bill Longworth using the email contact link on the right sidebar.

3) We shall continue to monitor the actions of council and to communicate our findings to the electorate via the site www.oshawaspeaks.ca.

4) We shall promote www.oshawaspeaks.ca through the distribution of business cards in the local plazas.

5) We shall prepare information flyers for door-to-door distribution. These communications will bring voter’s attention to the loss of their local council representation and name those members of council who have supported the change.

6) We shall work to undermine the voter support for Mayor Gray and Councilors Pidwerbecki, Kolodzie, Henry, Parkes, Sholdra, and Marimpietri for their self-serving votes to implement the general vote. Our flyer distribution will target the constituencies of these politicians.

7) We shall communicate Oshawa politicians’ irresponsible actions in an information letter to the mayor and council of all member municipalities of the Canada Association of Municipal Politicians to which Oshawa belongs with the intent of embarrassing them as anti-democratic in the plebiscite process they followed. In this letter, we shall include a link to our video “We Got Da Smarter Council Dan You Got!”

8) We shall continue to pressure council to provide funds to the VOTES group to communicate details of the electoral change to Oshawa citizens. Up to this point, the politicians named in item 6 above have shown their disrespect and despise for Oshawa voters by continually voting to refuse to provide information. These politicians must be defeated in the next election. You must incessantly continue to communicate to them your displeasure with their actions in regard to the general vote and tell them they have lost your support and that you will communicate this information to everyone you know in Oshawa.

9) We shall forward a copy of this letter to all donors to the political campaigns of those politicians who have voted to reject ward voting in favour of the self-serving general vote. Click here to see a listing of the campaign donors for the various candidates.


The result? With increasing voter disenchantment with the self-serving and expensive actions of council coupled with VOTES determined actions to return ward voting and local community representation to Oshawa ratepayers, Mayor Gray, and councillors Pidwerbecki, Kolodzie, Parkes, Henry, Sholdra, and Marimpietri who all supported taking away local political representation from Oshawa taxpayers will be turfed out of office in favour of representatives of the VOTES group who will return ward voting as the first piece of business.

Bill Longworth's Council Presentation on April 30, 2007

City council was scheduled to pass a city bylaw implementing the General Vote at their regular council meeting on April 30, 2007.

Bill Longworth's 30 minute presentation on the ward/general vote issue to council at this meeting appears in the four video clips below.

PART 1 - Bill Longworth's presentation to April 30, 2007 Oshawa City Council Meeting



PART 2 - Bill Longworth answers questions from Councillors John Neal and Robt. Lutczyk, both of whom support retaining ward elections



PART 3 - Bill Longworth answers questions from Councillor Louise Parkes who supports change to the general vote and thus poses hostile questions to Mr. Longworth



PART 4 - Bill Longworth answers questions from Councillor Mary Anne Sholdra who supports change to the general vote and thus poses hostile questions to Mr. Longworth



While Council invited written citizen submissions up to noon hour on this meeting date, these citizen submissions were not copied to the politicians for their deliberations, nor were the minutes of the April 19th public meeting held at Sikorski Hall to hear public input to council on this matter. All of this proves beyond a doubt what I have been saying all along...all invitations for public input was just a sham and a waste of taxpayer time in preparing such input.

Council knew what the end result of all of this was going to be from the November 2006 municipal elections and they were unwilling to seriously listen to any constituent input solicited as a result of their invitations for public submissions.

They continued to try to avoid controversy by denying citizen delegations at their April 30th Council meeting where they were to pass the permitting bylaw for the general vote.

Mr. Longworth was scheduled as a delegation at this meeting because council denied his organization a "Partnership Grant" so that he could provide an information brochure on the ward/general vote issue to all Oshawa residences. Democracy cannot exist without an informed public and council has continually voted to deny citizen's the needed information.

Mr. Longworth stepped into the breach to do the job that council refused to do and was seeking city funding to do so.

Council's refusal to provide citizen information shows profound disrespect for the citizens.

Mr. Longworth used his speaking opportunity to address the ward/general vote issue which is the subject of the videos associated with this post.

Citizens have to know how the general vote alters their interaction with city politicians, why the politicians felt it necessary to hold the plebiscite despite no public displeasure ever being expressed with the ward system, what was wrong with the ward system such that politicians felt a change was needed, and what benefits politicians expect to accrue from the general vote. They further need to explain why the system they want for Oshawa is not being used in any city in Canada the size of Oshawa without the use of political parties.

Experts at The Ontario Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing suggest that a population of about 20,000 is the upper limit for the use of the general vote and Oshawa is about eight times that size. The wards formerly used in Oshawa were about this optimum size.

The VOTES group will continue to communicate to the public throughout this term of council with the objective of defeating Mayor Gray and Councillors Pidwerbecki, Kolodzie, Sholdra, Parkes, Marimpietri, and Henry at the next election as these individuals have continually supported change to the general vote thus reducing democracy and political accountability in Oshawa. Their votes will result in the loss of politicians elected specifically by your community to represent your interests at city hall.

All Canadians Must Know of Oshawa Council's Undemocratic, Irresponsible and Self Serving Actions

Attention The Producer
CBC The National

cc Peter Mansbridge, Chief Correspondent, CBC The National

Re: Suggestion for "On the Road" Story for "The National"

Love your "On The Road" investigative reporting stories.

Oshawa politicians have strategized to implement the general vote for the election of council giving members constituency sizes twice the size of our federal or provincial members of parliament.

They "designed" a convoluted and confusing plebescite question and denied voters information before or after the vote simply to institute this system that will guarantee their election till death or resignation.

The Mayor publicly stated that City Council had NO RESPONSIBILITY to communicate details of this issue to the public prior to the vote.

They have since refused to communicate any details of how the administrative structure has changed, how citizens should now respond to changes in the system now that their local ward representative has been lost, any benefits they expect to accrue from the change, or any logical or sensible reasons for bringing the issue forth as a plebiscite question since not a whimper of public disatisfaction with the ward system had ever been expressed.

The only rationale given by politicians so far for introducing the plebiscite was, 1) It was about time the question was asked, and 2) Oshawa was getting too large for the ward system.

This change reduces democracy and political accountability in Oshawa and this self-serving manipulation of the system would be a good subject as a "Road Story" on The National.

The change removes the power of the vote in determining the composition of council which is a serious erosion of Canadian democratic principles.

Oshawa at about 160,000 population will be three times the size of the next largest Ontario Municipality using the general vote and the largest city in Canada using this system without the use of political parties.

Experts at The Ontario Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing suggest about 20,000 as the upper population limit for this electoral system.

Check www.oshawaspeaks.ca for more details.

Bill Longworth,
Founder and Chair of VOTES (Vote to Eliminate Self Serving Politicians)


NOTE: Oshawa residents should know that I have it on good authority that Council's idiotic self serving move to the general vote has received some ridicule from London Ontario Council members. We intend to send letters to the Mayor and Council of all members of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities bringing Oshawa City Council's self serving and undemocratic moves to the attention of their fellow members. This official communication to all municipal councils across the country should bring additional ridicule to Oshawa City Council. Oshawa politicians who have voted for a political system to serve them rather than the public may cause them to have to travel incognito among their municipal peers to avoid embarrassment.

Oshawa's not the LAUGHING STOCK of Canadian City Politics---Or Is It?

The following letter has been sent to the Managing Editor of FORUM MAGAZINE, the Political Journal of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities sent to politicians of all levels across the country.

Unbeknowst to you, loyal reader, 6 of our 11 council members were at their recent conference in CALGARY thanks to your local tax dollars---the highest in the GTA.

Oshawa's representation was so large that it may have constituted a forum for regular city council meetings...perhaps one should have been scheduled there.



Robert Ross,
Managing Editor
FORUM--Canada's National Municipal Magazine
Federation of Canadian Municipalities

EMAILED TO rross@fcm.ca

Re: Oshawa Council supports change to the general vote


Contrary to the belief that municipal government should be closest to the people, Oshawa’s City Council has voted to implement the general vote for the election of our municipal government thus insuring that the constituency of each municipal councillor is almost twice the size of that of our Federal and Provincial members.

By moving to the general vote, they have also taken away local neighbourhood or ward representation thus making all of our council members less accountable to the people. They believe that all members of council should be responsible for the constituency concerns of all city residents in this city of 160,000.

When Oshawa last had the general vote for seven councils prior to 1985, the vote was not responsible for any change on council as all changes took place through the death or resignation of members which then left an open spot for fresh representation. Because the experience demonstrates that councillors could not be defeated under the general vote, the votes tendered at elections were not real votes that made any difference whatsoever to the composition of council. This is a lessening of democracy when the vote is ineffective in determining your political leaders.

In addition, out of the 109 council seats voted on over that time, not one of those seats was won by anyone in the half of the city south of King Street. Huge areas of the city were unrepresented as most politicians came to reside in a few of the more affluent areas of the city. Eight of Fifteen Council members came from one of seven wards in the city and three council members resided in one polling subdivision. This is a lessening of democracy when the system is not inclusive of all demographics of the municipality.

It appears as if council members are more interested in securing their council seats until death or resignation rather than providing good governance for this city. It is a disrespect for democracy as well as the citizens when politician’s want to institute a system that puts their interests before the citizens that they purport to serve.

Your recent conference in Calgary was well attended by Oshawa Council members Mayor Gray and Councillors April Cullen, Tito Dante Marimpietri, Nester Pidwerbecki, Joe Kolodzie and Robert Lutczyk, four of whom (highlighted in bold type) voted in support of the change. The italicized member is the introducer of the motion and prime supporter of the change which he justified by 2 reasons---1) It was time the question was asked, and 2) Oshawa was getting too large for the ward system.

A confusing referendum question was designed after a number of council revisions whereby people had to vote “NO” to retain ward voting and “YES” to reject it. The question carried unfortunately: 1) In all probability because its confusion made it hard to understand, and 2) because council’s strategy was to keep it as a low-profile “non-issue” and thus failed to adequately inform the public about it or promote any public debate or discussion. Council had a public meeting before the vote that was so low-profile that only two citizens attended. The result then was that voters were confronted for the first time in the voting booth by a convoluted question about an important and complex issue they had not considered, thought about, or discussed---hardly a democratic process.

In adopting the general vote, council voted to maintain the existing city wards, a technicality that allowed the politicians to implement the change without any possible citizen appeal to the Ontario Municipal Board for any outside and objective scrutiny of the merits and benefits of the change.

Most council members voting for the change say that they don’t support a change to the general vote but are voting in support of the referendum result. Obviously they are supporting a severely flawed process---not the public will at all.

Beyond that, who ever expected that politicians would vote for something they have publicly stated to be “not best” for the city. We trust politicians to bring their best judgment to issues and vote accordingly.

It appears that council knew what they wanted and then designed a strategy to get it.

Council has never communicated to the people what benefits are to come from the change or indeed what was wrong with the ward electoral system which appeared to be working well since not a whimper of public dissatisfaction was ever expressed about it.

Mayor Gray publicly stated in a regular city council meeting that council had no responsibility to communicate information about the change to the public prior to the vote saying this was the responsibility of taxpayers who were opposed to the move….incredulous! Is this democracy in action?

As Canada’s largest city with the general vote devoid of party politics, perhaps Oshawa politicians know something about good municipal governance that is worthy of being written up in the Federation of Canadian Municipalities FORUM magazine so that politicians of every Canadian municipality can take advantage of the wisdom of our Oshawa politicians.

In addition, we believe that invitations should be tendered to Mayor Gray and Councillor Nestor Pidwerbecki to address your next convention to explain the benefits of the general vote to municipalities and perhaps even the process municipalities can follow if they too want to introduce the general vote.

After all, we in Oshawa believe in sharing our political knowledge to make Canada a better place, and the Federation of Canadian Municipalities organization has the mandate to communicate best local governance practices across the land.

If our politicians do give such an address to your organization, this would be the first opportunity for Oshawa citizens to hear of their rationale for the change and the benefits they expect to accrue to our city.

We don’t for a second believe that Oshawa’s moves to the general vote would make us the laughing stock of Canadian Municipal Politics but a breath of fresh air for all others to follow.

You may find more detailed information about this issue at www.oshawaspeaks.ca

Bill Longworth,
Chair/Founder VOTES (Vote to Eliminate Self-Serving Politicians)
Contact details removed