Friends, Over the next few days leading up to next Thursday’s debate, I will be expanding on my 6-point platform to not only explain in detail what I believe in and what I stand for, but also to give you an opportunity to interact with me and share your feedback on the issues we are facing this election. Please feel free to comment on these threads, or to contact me anytime so that I can speak with you personally. PLANK #1 – COUNCIL MUST GOVERN WITH TRANSPARENCY AND ACCOUNTABILITY. NO MORE SWEET HEART DEALS. This election, political independence will matter more than any other. People expect us to seek public office and serve for the right reasons – integrity, goodwill, to serve for the common good and to challenge the status quo. What we’ve seen over this past term of Council is the same old politics-as-usual good-old-boy network run roughshod. One of the elephants in the room over the past four years has been the Hornet’s Nest debacle. We borrowed $750,000.00 at 6% interest to put it in, and when the operation went south, we paid a sitting member of Council $50,000.00 to take over what was set up to fail in the first place. Not only that, but we allowed this member of Council to keep concession contracts that were never properly tendered to begin with. A sitting member of Council has been and continues to directly profit from taxpayers. Let me be clear when I say that the blame for this whole mess does not and cannot rest solely on one member of Council. It was Council that agreed to this deal, and it’s Council as a whole that owns it. What I found exceptionally disturbing was what followed. *One* member of Council stood in their place and put forth a motion to take steps to ensure that sweet heart deals like this one did not happen again…*Not one member* even so much as seconded their motion. That is deeply troubling to me. For those who campaigned on transparency and accountability in the last election, this ought to have been a no-brainer. In the first year if this Council’s term, *One* member asked for a full operational review of all departments so that anything and everything could and would have been done to maximize efficiency and find any and all savings before going to voters with a tax increase. This member was told that that would be a nickel-and-diming waste of time and was essentially laughed at. Once again, another scathing indictment of a blatant disregard for *Your* tax dollars. The cheque registry has been another fly in the face of transparency lately. We’re spending tens of thousands of dollars on legal bills, and we don’t even know what the bills are for. We’re spending hundreds of dollars fighting *parking tickets*?! We’re spending thousands of dollars fighting Freedom of Information requests. We’re shipping money out a whole new door, and the cheque registry is being wilfully redacted at the administrative level. What are they hiding? This is *Your* money and you have a right to know where and how it is being spent. With the exception of private citizens’ names being blacked out for privacy reasons, I see no other viable explanation for these redactions other than there is clearly something they do not want you to know. “Solicitor-Client Privilege”...YOU are the Client! When elected, I will fight for your right to know how your money is being spent tooth-and-nail. I will insist on a full operational review of all departments every year to ensure that government is run as lean and as smart is can be. I will oppose sweet heart deals like we’ve witnessed over this last term. I’m not going to Wellington Street to join the good-old-boy network…I’m going to Wellington Street to serve not only my constituents but all of New Tecumseth. I will stand up for taxpayers, I will challenge the status quo, and I will stop wasteful spending and put people first. This will demand the very best that I have to give, and I promise nothing less. -MKB
Posted on: Thu, 11 Sep 2014 16:24:33 +0000
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