Good afternoon,
This is a notice of the upcoming special Committee of the Whole meeting on June 1, 2015, at 10:00 a.m. in the Council Chambers.
For more information please refer to the website: http://tofino.ca/event/special-committee-whole
Regards,
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I can't believe it !! More consultants !! This time for water rates !! This has gone beyond a joke !!
"water sustainability consultant"..... Sounds important to me. Water is serious stuff. Gotta get on this before it evaporates, or leaks out, or flows away, or boils dry.... or gets put into a pipeline and shipped to Monsanto or Nestle.
ReplyDeleteWater isn't taken seriously enough. It's well known that we shouldn't cry over spilled milk, but no one seems to care about spilled water.
Perhaps some sandwich boards could be placed around town to remind folks to conserve water whenever they can.
All jokes aside, here we again see a council afraid to govern. Instead, let's spend some of that bottomless well of "tax dollars" and hire a consultant to tell us that water, like sh*t, flows downhill.
ReplyDeleteso can someone please tell me if the consultants have taken into account in determining water rates the vast amount of water and the vast amount of money that was given away for free to various resorts..
probably not because they were given information before the water meter gate burst upon the scene.
if this is correct that consultants are working without a true and accurate accounting of the water consumed, then pray tell what sort of smoke and mirrors are we paying for?
Staff should be hired based on their expertise not their ability to outsource their work while continuing to draw a pay check.
ReplyDelete5:03 AM points out what appears to be what's happening. it's like a reverse pyramid scheme that the taxpayer just keeps paying for and nothing gets done.
ReplyDeleteif the existing staff cannot analyze water bills and consumption rates versus the actual available supply of water something is seriously wrong with the way things get done here. or don't get done.
and if staff can't do it a council member weather calculator sure can.
but no one wants to be responsible for anything.
and then there's the.... who analyzes the consultants facts and figures? doh
if one of us has the temerity to question this stuff we are met with a bureaucratic Stonewall and have to resort to an FYI request to access public records. great governance! the people are the enemy.
i agree with and applaud all the above comments.
ReplyDeleteIt's surprising how fast our tiny town has developed into an inept bureaucracy.......
ReplyDeleteIt seems like we're paying staff to just coordinate these studies which they then present to council. There's no "real" work going on, just nice lunches and meetings with consultants who come from out of town and call the shots on what our little community should be doing. And even then it rarely gets done. We've gone so far to the dark side I don't think we're ever going to get our real little community back. But we could study it.
ReplyDelete10:39 you mean by studying it we should hire another consultant instead of just doing what obviously needs to be done?
ReplyDeletewe could hire a consultant to produce a report on how we can get the community back........ get it back from the consultants?
ReplyDeletesurely they'll recommend that we get an engineer's report, an environmental assessment, a new survey of the whole town, another water study, a review of the demographic trends on Vancouver Island, a safety report, a traffic study, an impact study about tourism in a small town, a biosphere report, and riparian habitat review, and counselling on what the people should do and how they should act if they ever get the town back.........
7.04pm. Joking..!
ReplyDeleteThe Main st. consultants have already won the 2015 silver planning excellence award for this project.
ReplyDeleteWow these consultants are amazing... That plan hasn't even been approved by Tofino's council
More STOP Signs - planter pots - tacky street painting - yellow lawn furniture - eliminating 20 parking spots, but NO Lighthouse
I see a bright future for Tofino . Never mind Surf Capitol of Canada let's have the Consulting Capitol of Canada !! Consulting contests to see who can charge the Rubes at the DOT the most !
ReplyDeleteConsulting Tourism is the New Frontier !! All paid for by the taxpayer.
I was at Coombs the other day. Looks like it did 30 years ago as far as the road goes. No fancy custom cobblestone sidewalks or stupid benches everywhere.No bike lanes or delineated parking stalls.No RMI money,no 8% tax tax increase and lots of free spending tourists everywhere .
ReplyDeleteIf we could only hire the the coombs people for consultants.
ReplyDeleteand guess what?
coombs does not have zoning.
what this says is that tofino did not need pavers, tacky street painting, planters, less parking and a bunch of expensive benches to be an economically viable tourist destination resort.
keep in mind that Coombs had really nothing going for it once they built the new highway and bypassed the place.
regardless it remained a popular locale to go to spend money. there is nothing else there besides what they've built.
it became successful without consultants. doh! how could that have happened?
maybe they used common sense, hard work, and some business savvy - three things that are sadly lacking at the DOT.
No one seems to realize that we do not absolutely have to have the Parksville Qualicum look.
No water meters or resorts in Coombs.No loss of revenue
ReplyDeleteDon't talk like this! the next thing you know the staff at the DOT will all quit and become consultants so we will have to pay them high prices for their knowledge and expertise in the areas of finance, administration, tourism and so on
ReplyDeleteand just what knowledge would we be paying for 7:20am? Oh I forgot that is what you pay consultants for. Wait a minute aren't consultants people who just say they know the answers but like the DOT staff checking water meters with nobody thinking or checking or asking anyone else if they too thought the numbers/meters were wrong, who checks up on the credentials of these folks?
ReplyDeleteI wonder if the consultants will tell the town to leave the hotel rates where they are and lower the rates for everyone else? It would be about time. Then we'd be giving high 5's to the council for actually doing something for us.
Maybe the Councillors should remember they themselves have also paid out all the extra money like the rest of us have to those hotels.
This mayor, Josie Osborne and council has failed. Josie is head of the ACRD why? She has so lacked any level of leadership in our town on this issue that the only motive I can see her to have is a political career. Like Gord Johns before her what other motive could there be?
ReplyDeleteDiscriminatory billing for water where residents and small busineses pay the Bills and the biggest businesses cheat the system and are rewarded with cheaper rates...Simply unbelievable. Solution more money spent on consulting. O Time to get the ombudsman and the media involved. Can we recall a council and Mayor?
There is no recall for municipal politicians.As far as the Mayor goes please remember that nobody else wanted the job.
ReplyDeleteYes indeed, 7:17am Discrimination is the word.
ReplyDeleteRacial and other discrimination was banned long ago in this country so why is water rate discrimination allowed to take place in Tofino?
The water rates are based on there having been lobbying done in the past by special interest groups. Why should there be special water rates for special interest groups???? That is discrimination against the residents and other users.
Is it not time to clean the slate and wipe out all these different water rates?
Simplify everyone's bill so that every user pays the same rate for water. We can have the seasonal rates continue for conservation purposes. It is exactly what the City of Vancouver does. One rate for all and seasonal adjustments for conservation purposes.
Equality for all users.
Agree with Ralph...... "Nobody else wanted the job". The question we should actually be looking at is "Why not?" Could it be because the "system", as it's been manipulated over the years by municipal employees, is impossible to function in, in a sane manner.
ReplyDeleteExample: We've got a guy being paid $100,000 a year...... to trim grass alongside the streets. This same guy has years of experience at repair and maintenance of water and sewer systems, but his expertise , instead of being utilized, is wasted, so we pay consultants to tell us what he already knows.
Example: We've got men in town with a lifetime of experience in the construction of water and sewer projects, who, if asked, would undoubtedly be happy to assist in the planning and design of new projects as they became necessasary. Instead, we ignore the "old guys" and hire consultants to tell us what our citizens already know.
Example: We've got a guy in the District office who requires $35,000 to figure out how to keep the records of his office. This guy is being paid ? $80,000 ? ..... Shouldn't he know, at least, the requirements of his position?
Example; If someone in the district office is incompetant, or simply neglects or refuses to do their work, it costs a fortune to fire and replace them. You don't seem to be able to simply tell them to "get to work or get out!" This attitude of "entitilement" is strong. The boss is supposed to be mayor and council, but it don't work that way....... the real boss is the attitude of the employees. No one else in town has the salary and benefits of these municipal employees, and it's a well known joke how they avoid work, shed responibility, deny when held to account. We, as taxpayers, should have the ability to demand more performance for our tax dollars. But we don't.
The system is sick.
So all the sh*t ends up falling on mayor and council, the public face available to be yelled at, as the citizens try to figure out "What in heck is going on here?", when all mayor and council can do is "beg" for staff to "please" do your jobs...... and staff continues to do, as always, as they damm well please, citing "rules", "procedures", and "whatever bureaucratic bullsh*t" they can come up with to frustrate matters, create more paperwork, and most importantly, to insure that they'll still have their snouts in the trough next year, working on the "problems" that they have created and nurtured in order to insure their own survival.
Throw your hat in the ring? Run for mayor or council?
It's no wonder that nobody wants the job.
Most of this council voted to fire Sally Mole at the request of the former CAO.For some reason they refuse to hold current staff accountable.....the status quo is unsustainable.Severance was paid to Sally as there was no just cause .At this time we have several million gallons of just cause .
ReplyDeleteon the topic of discrimination, this from the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights writing on human rights in the US:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=15188
"In line with the mandates entrusted to us by the Human Rights Council, we would like to underline that the United States is bound by international human rights law and principles, including the right to life as well as the right to non-discrimination with respect to housing, water and sanitation and the highest attainable standard of health. These obligations apply to all levels of Government – federal, state and municipal."
Tofino should be abiding by the same rules where residents are not discriminated against in their access to water.
@9:50am (resort owner)
ReplyDeleteDiscrimination?
Before we start with a clean the slate
You should pay for the water that you been using in the last decade
the residents of Tofino have been subsidizing your commercial operation
Shame on YOU !
The resort owners, were wanting lower rates than everyone else not a clean slate with a flat rate for everyone. Right now, the slate, the chalkboard the district is using to calculate who pays what, is awash with the detritus of legacy lobbying. That is what I think was being referred to, the getting rid of the discrimination amongst user groups and everyone having to pay the same for their water.
ReplyDeleteIt would be nice if the other users got their money back from supporting the resorts all those years.
It seems to me that what is most lacking is accountability from our elected officials, the 'supervisors' of all employees. An honest, factual press release from council and mayor, taking responsibility for the water invoice errors, explaining how the errors occurred and what steps are being taken, or not, to correct these errors. Something we can rationally discuss in order to begin to close the massive abyss between the citizens and their elected representatives.
ReplyDelete