OrilliaMatters welcomes letters to the editor at [email protected]. Please include your daytime phone number and address (for verification of authorship, not publication). The following letter is in response to an article regarding changes to Orillia city council meetings, published Dec. 12.
*************************
I read with great interest the article about Orillia city council and staff conspiring to halve their workloads and further hide their nefarious machinations from public scrutiny.
I must say I have seldom read such codswallop and poppycock as the reasons expressed in the staff report, and the assurances given by the city solicitor. Those interested in etymology may be interested to learn that the word poppycock is derived from a Dutch word meaning “soft dung,” and that is exactly what is being thrown around here.
How could cutting the number of meetings by 40 per cent possibly “enhance accountability and transparency?” The answer, of course, is that it can’t. The truth is the exact opposite. How are evening meetings “elitist?” How is 5 p.m. or 7 p.m. more elitist than 2 p.m.? How stupid do these people think we are? Is the staff report written by Donald Trump and George Orwell?
And what about this tripe from the city solicitor? Another statement in diametric opposition to the truth. “Sober second thought” and public input have been thoroughly and deliberately excised from the democratic process in Orillia and it is shameful for the solicitor to claim otherwise.
Committee decisions made without public input will be ratified a few hours later in the same meeting. The public will have exactly no input. If you think councillors are willingly going to “pull” the reports and expose their own stupid decisions to public scrutiny and input, you’re dreaming.
If this procedural bylaw is a “living document,” it needs to be euthanized. Make no mistake — the revised bylaw severely diminishes accountability, transparency and public input. For whose benefit?
I call on council and staff to be honest about why these draconian and anti-democratic changes are being made, and to be honest about why this new council feels the public is not worthy to participate in municipal governance.
And I thank Coun. Jay Fallis for having the integrity to point out the real truth and stand up for the citizens of Orillia.
Mark Elgar
Orillia
*************************
