West Vancouver council is obsessed with pre-election make-good
How do you know an election is coming?
- Mayor and council release a friendly study on four days’ notice at council timed conveniently to congratulate themselves for stellar management. The public gets an executive summary of the study, but the full report will be exempted from disclosure under Freedom of Information law. This is the open, transparent governance we have come to expect.
- It brings forward a proposal on seniors housing after years of inactivity on the crisis. This is the hurry-up, an-election-looms exercise to mitigate justifiable complaint.
- The mayor’s email messages to the community spring back to life as an election prop at taxpayers’ expense.
- The pay parking scheme hurting local business in Ambleside is further diluted and walked back in retreat to try to bury the debacle. It is now ineffective in generating net revenue.
- Even though the provincial government had already imposed the Ambleside Local Area Plan, council stages a phony “public hearing” on it as a show-pony for political purposes to suggest it is consulting when there is no actual impact.
You shouldn’t be deceived by this. Most every administration at this stage of the election cycle indulges in a self-serving ritual of recognizing its mistakes and trying to convince the public it didn’t really make any.
The reality is that public finances are unsustainable, taxes will rise significantly next year because of that, the necessary construction of seniors housing is tracking far behind schedule, and the public won’t have the answers it needs on the wastewater plant budget until an independent inquiry is completed years from now. But for the time being, the pre-election scramble will attempt to make everything seem in place.