keoadmin
12-15-2004, 07:57 PM
Last week’s council meeting was slow and uninteresting, but what was interesting was the legal department’s insistence that because no one had filed a claim for damage from last September’s flooding, the city was in the clear. Wrong!!
The council in all of its wisdom has made the PUC a private company wholly own by the City. People are not going to sue the City, but they are going to sue the private company for damages. The private company is not protected like the City. This means higher fees to pay for the damages will be inevitable for all of us. Most people would not sue if they had a little support. Instead the City told them to spend their Christmas money on removingthe @##$% from their basements, forgetting the fact that once you flush, the contents become the property of the City. Remember this issue raised by former Councillor Don Rogers? The city was concerned by the amount of material being stolen from blue boxes. It claimed that once the material was put out for collection, it became the City’s. Similarily, if sewer pipes spew into the Cataraqui River, the content belongs to the City, not the people whose basements got filled with the crap.
With a health care system on the ropes, maybe OHIP will help the City by donating salt to reduce falls and the consequent workload at the hospitals. This would require a new version of the P3: a P2P. It would require a public municipal service to talk to a provincial government service. Just think of the studies and the consultants that would need to be hired to get this program to run! We would need to go outside of the current channels to explore this option because there is no one capable to do this within the City. After all, we can't even inform the public about a few hockey rinks without going to outside channels.
Counting your grants before they hatch
There were some underlying questions not asked when George Stoparczyk expressed his concern about the major $100 million packaged grant the City had applied for to cover the Ravensview Sewer, the second crossing and the downtown sewer system upgrades. If the mayor and his merry men have put the shovel in the ground already, they may have blown the grant. It's like the building department puting the cart before the horse. They barely noticed the new Wal-Mart Building down the road from their office. Wal-Mart drew attention to itself when they applied for the building permits for work already done. I think the city ran into the same problem at the Kingston Centre.
Hear that? It's your taxes going up. The Province is only focused on Health and Education. They are looking any excuse to say no. Without Cat-Bert, the city is lacking a point man (or woman) to spearhead grant proposals. By the way, what has our MPP done for us lately?
Poor Sara, she got up and said something. Sara, please think and maybe write it down before the council meeting. How many people do you want on a committee? You keep changing your mind mid-sentence. If you want to change the number of people on a committee so you can get a seat, just ask, ‘Could we change the number on the committee so I can get a seat?’ You beat around the bush for five minutes, yet I still can't remember if you said something important.
Good news
The Harvey Fan Club (K-WS) spoke up last week in their editorials, giving Our Worship a passing grade. They gave The Big Cheese an A-. He will get things done, they said. Well sure he will. The public has no input. He should be able to do what he wants.
The business community stood shoulder-to-shoulder as a backdrop to his campaign. It's a tit-for-tat world. Business did something for the Big Cheese. Well, Harvey, it's payback time! They are calling in their markers, and not everyone wants a hockey rink. For instance, maybe Fred LaFlamme is looking for a career change for Paul Schliesmann, or Noreen Rasback or, if we are lucky, RobTripp After all, this was managed for Annette Phillips who is some sort of communication person for KEDCO.
Newsflash: The Mayor Has At Least Two Votes On Every Issue….at least so it seems, judging by Leonore Foster’s acceptance speech after her re-election as Deputy Mayor.
"I am delighted that council has shown their faith in me to serve another year term as Kingston's Deputy Mayor," said Foster. "I will continue to do my best, as a representative of the Mayor, City Council and the citizens of our fine city." Ms. Foster is the Councillor for the Kingston district of Pittsburgh.
It sounds as though Harvey can sit at home and pull the strings from there. I hope they don't get tangled in Ed's or Floyd's strings. I wonder if I will be able to mark my calendar next week as the first time Ed, Floyd or Leonore vote against the big Cheese.
The council in all of its wisdom has made the PUC a private company wholly own by the City. People are not going to sue the City, but they are going to sue the private company for damages. The private company is not protected like the City. This means higher fees to pay for the damages will be inevitable for all of us. Most people would not sue if they had a little support. Instead the City told them to spend their Christmas money on removingthe @##$% from their basements, forgetting the fact that once you flush, the contents become the property of the City. Remember this issue raised by former Councillor Don Rogers? The city was concerned by the amount of material being stolen from blue boxes. It claimed that once the material was put out for collection, it became the City’s. Similarily, if sewer pipes spew into the Cataraqui River, the content belongs to the City, not the people whose basements got filled with the crap.
With a health care system on the ropes, maybe OHIP will help the City by donating salt to reduce falls and the consequent workload at the hospitals. This would require a new version of the P3: a P2P. It would require a public municipal service to talk to a provincial government service. Just think of the studies and the consultants that would need to be hired to get this program to run! We would need to go outside of the current channels to explore this option because there is no one capable to do this within the City. After all, we can't even inform the public about a few hockey rinks without going to outside channels.
Counting your grants before they hatch
There were some underlying questions not asked when George Stoparczyk expressed his concern about the major $100 million packaged grant the City had applied for to cover the Ravensview Sewer, the second crossing and the downtown sewer system upgrades. If the mayor and his merry men have put the shovel in the ground already, they may have blown the grant. It's like the building department puting the cart before the horse. They barely noticed the new Wal-Mart Building down the road from their office. Wal-Mart drew attention to itself when they applied for the building permits for work already done. I think the city ran into the same problem at the Kingston Centre.
Hear that? It's your taxes going up. The Province is only focused on Health and Education. They are looking any excuse to say no. Without Cat-Bert, the city is lacking a point man (or woman) to spearhead grant proposals. By the way, what has our MPP done for us lately?
Poor Sara, she got up and said something. Sara, please think and maybe write it down before the council meeting. How many people do you want on a committee? You keep changing your mind mid-sentence. If you want to change the number of people on a committee so you can get a seat, just ask, ‘Could we change the number on the committee so I can get a seat?’ You beat around the bush for five minutes, yet I still can't remember if you said something important.
Good news
The Harvey Fan Club (K-WS) spoke up last week in their editorials, giving Our Worship a passing grade. They gave The Big Cheese an A-. He will get things done, they said. Well sure he will. The public has no input. He should be able to do what he wants.
The business community stood shoulder-to-shoulder as a backdrop to his campaign. It's a tit-for-tat world. Business did something for the Big Cheese. Well, Harvey, it's payback time! They are calling in their markers, and not everyone wants a hockey rink. For instance, maybe Fred LaFlamme is looking for a career change for Paul Schliesmann, or Noreen Rasback or, if we are lucky, RobTripp After all, this was managed for Annette Phillips who is some sort of communication person for KEDCO.
Newsflash: The Mayor Has At Least Two Votes On Every Issue….at least so it seems, judging by Leonore Foster’s acceptance speech after her re-election as Deputy Mayor.
"I am delighted that council has shown their faith in me to serve another year term as Kingston's Deputy Mayor," said Foster. "I will continue to do my best, as a representative of the Mayor, City Council and the citizens of our fine city." Ms. Foster is the Councillor for the Kingston district of Pittsburgh.
It sounds as though Harvey can sit at home and pull the strings from there. I hope they don't get tangled in Ed's or Floyd's strings. I wonder if I will be able to mark my calendar next week as the first time Ed, Floyd or Leonore vote against the big Cheese.