Regarding reporter Jennifer Thuncher’s Q&A with our mayor (Sept. 21), she uses as a yardstick of her job performance some statistics that were probably given to her that are irrelevant to any true analysis of her job performance. She must have misunderstood the memo that said she worked for the benefit of the taxpayer. Easily accessible statistics prove without a doubt her performance has been somewhat less than, can I say, stellar. New business starts are fine if the taxpayer sees a tax benefit, but just numbers mean mothering. Property taxes could be up by close to 20 per cent by the time her reign is up. Who got a 20 per cent increase in wages over four years, very few people I would hazard to guess.
Utilities are due earlier and I don’t care how it is spun, it is still an increase. The roads, sidewalks, and lighting are in poor shape. I don’t see any progress in eliminating ditches, but we have an economic development department, expanded tech dept. and in general an expanded muni. Considering we are always told by this council we are a family community, where is the waterpark or theatre? Young families are facing increasing costs all over by big anonymous corporations and you would think our muni would try to keep operating costs low, but no, we have new signs.
In my history of observing politics, I can count on one hand the number of mayors, premiers or prime ministers who left voluntarily. Our mayor might say she hasn’t decided yet, but let’s be honest here, the only question is real, can I win? She gives the impression that she is being a real trooper and doing this solely for the benefit of the community — there goes the turnip truck.
If our mayor stuck to the business of efficiently running our community and not worried about things like self-driving cars and other things that might or might not happen, she would find her time commitment go down dramatically.
