Navel-gazing and lint-picking from the Halifax council on Commonwealth Games
This past week's council meeting in Halifax was democracy at work. When asked about updates to estimated costs for the 2014 Commonwealth Games, the bid committee CEO Scott Logan replied:
Didn't think so.
Not that being out of the loop seems to bother our councillors; Jim Smith, whose Albro Lake district is one of the areas being considered for new facilities, reduced resident and councillor concerns to repetitive carping:
Just for the record, I didn't vote for a bid committee, I voted for you guys to spend my money. I didn't vote for you guys to sit on your trusting asses and hope things work out well.
Get back to work.
Nice. So we can expect to be fully briefed on the costs of the Games only when it's too late to do anything about it. How's about we withhold your paycheque until we tell you if we're happy with the job you're doing?[we] will continue to release data when we can — when it’s known and when it doesn’t jeopardize our bid.
Didn't think so.
Not that being out of the loop seems to bother our councillors; Jim Smith, whose Albro Lake district is one of the areas being considered for new facilities, reduced resident and councillor concerns to repetitive carping:
"There’s a few members that constantly ask the same questions, and we get the same answers. . . . We have to trust ourselves as a council (and) we have to trust the people that are on this committee to do the job," Mr. Smith said, adding, "We have to start getting together on this."So, questions like "how much is this going to cost?", "what happens to our other important projects?", and "how much is this going to hit us for taxes?" should be reduced to simply trusting the people that have said they don't want to release the data when it might "jeapordize" the project?
Just for the record, I didn't vote for a bid committee, I voted for you guys to spend my money. I didn't vote for you guys to sit on your trusting asses and hope things work out well.
Get back to work.
