Township Councillor Jordan Bateman's letter to the editor of The Langley Advance provides a rational reply to comments made in the same newspaper earlier this week by Mayor Raging Bull, as part of his ongoing bullying of certain council members that he and his slate feel threatened by.
The immediate reaction from the Raging Bull fan club was this assault on Bateman in typical fashion for this slate. Of course this letter contains baseless accusations that Bateman is inexperienced, when in fact Councillor Bateman enjoys the strong respect of senior politicians and veteran ministers, one of which Mayor Raging Bull tried to create a fallacy of endorsement from by crashing this minister's BBQ uninvited this past summer. We have it on good sources that this slate greatly resents the respect that Bateman enjoys from seasoned and popular politicians, and they are seen attacking him often for it. The Bull's latest attack is yet another MAJOR sign of a mayor running scared. Maybe you can term it a "running of the bulls"? When the running of the bulls is in full swing, the thought process of the bulls simply switch off and they do some wild and unpredictable things. Some term their behaviour as "madness"."Indeed, the lack of federal funding is disappointing, but council decided to move forward, because the majority of the funds were sourced outside of the Township, and taxpayers were protected from cost overruns by a fixed-price, design-build agreement.
Further, council has fully disclosed all information related to the budget, construction, and the partners involved in the project."
- TOL Councillor Jordan Bateman
Of course Bateman is singled out and the rest of council (including Kim Richter) are all ignored. We are certain this letter writer and Mayor Raging Bull are keenly aware of these election results from the November 15, 2008 election, but we will remind them that the "mandate" is very clear.
BATEMAN, Jordan - 9273 votes
FOX, Charlie - 7956 votes
RICHTER, Kim - 7906
GREEN, Rick - 7842
One will note that BATEMAN, FOX and RICHTER all received more votes than the mayor. Mayor Raging Bull and his slate are now VERY scared of Bateman and it shows in their letters and blog posts. The opposition is coming together very strongly, and in good numbers. Smart people are seeing the game and lack of detailed public plans from this slate. They are coming on board to voice their opposition in ways that one particular councillor has never seen. One of our Editorial Board members overhead her being dressed down by a significant community leader, despite her attemtps to pander to him.
These Raging Bull tactics will only backfire on the Bull and his slate. In fact, it has already started. People don't take kindly to bullies these days. Times have changed old man. Better update the photo so the people can see the real you.
18 comments:
I've found these letters, from both Mayor Green and Councilor Bateman to be enlightening. On one hand we have Mayor Green attacking the age and experience of Councilor Bateman under the guise of 'clarification' and 'transparency'. On the other we have Jordan's cool and collected response to the Mayor's letter, showcasing what a fantastic investment the LEC is for this community.
I expect better from a Mayor to be honest. However, now that he has lowered and set the bar for himself, I won't be surprised to see more of this unprofessional behaviour from him in the future.
One last note on 'transparency': I attempted to review the details of Mayor Green's campaign platform via his website rickgreenformayor.ca only to find that the site has been removed... at least I was able to review Jordan's platform via his site - jordanbateman.com
Saw the letters in today's Times. I think this battle goes to Bateman.
You are certainly correct that Bateman topped to polls in the last election but that was BEFORE the LEC fiasco. You know how they always do polling prior to an event and then again after the event to see what effect the event had on the support. Now that people have seen to what lengths Bateman has gone to "cover his ass" and TRY and deflect criticism from his own actions his support will certainly have diminished. In fact this blog, appears to have been a result of Batemans "CYA"tactics.
And isn't it odd how EVERYONE who supports Green's action is a member of his fan club. You certainly don't give the taxpayers of the TOL any credit for having any intelligence. That attitude is certain to diminish Batemans support even further.
BTW, did you notice that the writer of the letter to the editor actually signed his name. You might do the same if you want to be credible.
Horny Toad
Gee Horny Toad, we fully expected your pro-Raging Bull commentary much soon. You're slipping! LOL
It is funny how you speak of the LEC as if Bateman with total disregard for staff, mayor and council charged ahead and did something. Get real man, Bateman had as much input on the LEC as your pal Richter. And where was she is 2006/2007?? Again, Bateman is a serious threat and the haters MUST try their best to discredit him.
We give the taxpayers lots of credit here in the TOL. But our attitude towards the Raging Bull love fest regardless of the facts group is met with the same level of "attitude" that they dish out. If we reflect poorly on Bateman (though we are not his campaign people and just calling it as it is), then the RG love fest group attitude will reflect equally on Green.
Blogs provide a forum for poeple and groups of people to speak freely. Older folks don't understand blogs all that much and so we can appreciate RG love fest people sticking to the old ways. When someone does post their name they are met with personal attacks from the editor of a certain blog that claims to only be a "photographer" for the Editor of his blog. Maybe if he comes out of the closet then we will consider posting our entire Editorial Board. But any intelligent person can sort out the baby shit from the apple sauce on who the true editor is over there.
You why horny is on this blog because Richter's blog is pure censorship.
Unless she can feel the love. Isn't that right horny?
"You why horny is on this blog because Richter's blog is pure censorship."
HUH???
Horny Toad
"Olympic Athletes Village = One BIG Pricetag."
This is what can happen when a city council doesn't do the proper "due dilligence" and gets into situations such as not having all the proper financing and contracts in place BEFORE starting construction.
Looks like the TOL (and the taxpayers of the TOL) got off lightly---this time.
Horny Toad
Raging Bull doesn't even need a kool-aid sipping fan club to sink his ship, he's turning the guns around and pointing them at the deck all by himself...
You're not kidding destro!
We think everyone would have been hard pressed to give Raging Bull a hard time if he had entered the job by engaging the major stakeholders internally, learning the process and working within the framework for a time. Not that transparency or anything had to be thrown out, but just using the established process that is very non-partisan.
But the Bull charged into the china shop and he has really set the tone for how things will play out. His supporters will try their best to blame everyone except Richter, but that is just plain silly. Raging Bull wrote his own ticket and either he does a 180 quickly or he continues with guns drawn and losing serious battles left and right.
As expected, you have decided to censor my posts. I expected that, only sooner.
Horny Toad
Horny Toad: Can we assume you are talking about one of the posts above? Blogger (the web host) has issues sometimes with their servers. Another comment came in a short while ago and after several error messages we saw these three appear. We can assure you no one here tried to censor you whatsoever.
The Vancouver Olympic Village is a mess and Gregor desperately wants to pin that on former mayor and council (sound familiar?) But as easy as that is, those guys (like everyone else) never considered that there would be a global credit crunch. The developer will not own the property until after the Olympics and so they can't go to another lender and finance the project. This is a VERY unusual situation.
If governments have to plan for every and any contingency (impossible to do), then nothing would get built by the public sector or any P3. In Langley's case a contingency fund was established and it covers the bill. Any construction overruns (unlike Vancouver) will be born by Langley's design and build contractor. So yes, we got off light. We really think it is apples and oranges, but we agree with you that caution must be taken on these projects.
@Horny Toad - I think the comments about Richter's blog being "pure censorship" refer to some comments on nearly every posting being "edited by site owner". For example, the posting "Councilor Jordan Bateman's Political Spins..." has 23 comments, 14 of which are marked as edited by site owner. While I may not call that "pure" censorship, I am lead to believe there is a lot of censoring going on there - much more so than most blogs I read.
Destro, I wasn't refering to Richters blog although they do a lot of "editing". Jordan does the same thing but not quite as often. I think it has more to do with fear of lawsuit than anything. On Jordans blog you can't say anything derogatory about other councillors as he edits it out.
@Anon - Interesting... I'm eager to know more about this censorship. Have you personally experienced it? I'm not challenging you, just looking for information.
That is how I interpret Richter's blog.
At least Bateman displays the criticism, I have yet to see that from Richter's blog.
That is why I like this blog the best, it seems balanced.
Thanks Langley Record
I'm certain that we are far from perfect and we will never please everyone, but with the exception of two posts ages ago that only called us names and didn't address any issues, we have published everything and have done our best not to block things like another annoying editor.
We even appreciate the fact that Horny Toad visits here frequently and has felt comfortable to engage us. Though we may disagree at times, we can have a discussion and allow Horny and others to speak their minds. We will edit out or not post things that are libelous and without fact-checking. Perhaps this is what Councillor Bateman is doing and if so, one has to realize that he must work with these same people.
Thanks to all of you for reading and posting!
We were all thinking that if Horny Toad makes contact with Mayor Rick Green and gets some answers on his plans to move ahead, etc. perhaps we could get Horny Toad to do a guest post on this conversation. What do you the readers think about that?
Horny asks good questions but he seems to only want to defend Green and not ask the same questions to him.
I guess if you voted for him, you do not need to ask those questions.
The questions I have been asking of Bateman have to do with the LEC and the funding issues surrounding it.
Green wasn't involved in that as it was the doings of the last council. So I have no questions to ask him on that issue.
The other issue has to do with Green making the LEC public and I totally agree with him on doing that.Why would I question him when I support his actions?
Horny Toad
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