The news behind the news. Exploring the political issues, debates and voting records in the Township of Langley and sometimes beyond.

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

January 12, 2009 Council Meeting and Beyond

Mayor's Report

We are pleased to report that the Mayor's Report was tame last evening and this was refreshing news. We trust that future reports will highlight the various activities happening in our community and which are attended by mayor and council backups.

Hiring Committees and a Consultant

Councillor Mel Kositsky did take Mayor Green to task regarding the launch of the new Finance Committee and said basically without advertising and process, this was a slap in the face to volunteers in our community. Kositsky also repeated his questions related to the hiring of real estate consultant Bruce Maitland (and Green campaign confidant) . Although Councillor Kositsky asked many times for the price tag for this consultancy, we only know that the initial consultation will be 20-40 hours and therefore does not need council approval. But HOW MUCH??

Council spent a good amount of time in the special meeting discussing snow removal and storm policy. In the end they refered the issue to staff to research options and costs. In the evening session Councillor Kim Richter put forth a motion that would require the Township to clear all roads within 72 hours, among other provisions. This without any indication from staff of the costs. She was the only council member who's comments were overwhelmingly negative and with little thanks to public works staff for sacrifices over the holidays. Councillor Richter made a reference to having money for an events centre and therefore having enough for snow removal. A basic business lesson was given to Councillor Richter by fellow councillors who pointed out that the events centre was capital costs and snow removal is operational costs. The motion was defeated while a report from staff on snow removal options is pending.

Although visibly upset at times during the discussions related to committees and such, our council reporter says that Mayor Green did a fairly good job of containing anger and seemed to treat the councillors with a higher degree of respect. This is all good and we applaud the mayor for moving in this new direction.

Charlie Fox On The Mend

One final item of note from last evening. Council moved to grant Councillor Charlie Fox an indefinate leave of absence with pay, so that he can recover from his recent kidney transplant and focus on healing along with his family.  Councillor Richter tried to offer an amendment to the motion to limit Charlie's leave of absence to 6 months only. We will resist the urge to comment further on this one. 

Snow Removal

One of our loyal reads sent us this possible cost-effective snow removal solution for Councillor Richter to consider. With all of her..."interesting" motions this one may win her heart over. We know an unemployed guy who kicks around the TOL who may want to apply for this and do something constructive for once. That is unless our mayor has a few more friends who might be interested in the job. 

Blogger In The Fog

We hear that another blog writer is ranting and raving again over our anonymity. This is really hilareous given the fact that no individual on that blog takes credit or responsibility for their posts, and everyone is in denial as to who the real "editor" is (as if none of us already know!) He's got a bee in his bonnet now and intends to take everyone to task. He's also planning on logging the entire internet on the advice of some underemployed apparent legal student/intern that can't find a real legal job. Canada is a free country and enjoys freedom of the press. Of course this person and the elected official that owns the site is restrictive as to who gets the freedom and liberty. All we can say is log on buddy. Log on. We aren't scared of you and we  don't come anywhere close to feeling intimidated. Log on.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hey Kim, we get it.....you are against the LEC. Make sure you get dressed up for the Photo Op at the Grand Opening.

Are you telling me that Richter didn't know the difference between capital and operating budgets?


Interesting. And this person is on the financial review committee.

What a joke.

Anonymous said...

"She was the only council member critical of staff and offered no thanks for the work that had been done, nor the holiday sacrifices that staff made."

Now, isn't that funny. I just saw a U Tube clip showing Richter praising staff fot the snow removal work they did and placing the blame on the TOL's policy, NOT the staff.

Course, maybe that was last year's clip. Yea, thats it-its last year's clip.

Incidently, which council member writes this blog? Its not Bateman or Richer or Green so it must be .....?

Horny Toad

Anonymous said...

We double-checked with our council reporter and our reporter confirms that Councillor Richter's comments were prefaced with the policy comment and then it was all down hill from there. We have updated our post to reflect this. As we don't look at the other blog we have no idea what kind of edit job was done, but the comments made were overwhelmingly negative our report confirms.