GIVE REAL REASON

According to the civic administration, the reason for putting GPS devices on our garbage cans is because city employees cannot remember where they left off on their routes, because garbage cans go missing, and because the bins are sometimes not emptied.

I hope the employees realize their managers think they are incapable of making a note of where they left off on a route. If workers cannot remember, perhaps they could write it down in a notebook. To supply a pencil and notebook, even on a monthly basis, to each collector would be considerably cheaper than $1.2 million to put bar codes on each receptacle.

The city’s spokesperson didn’t know how many bins went missing or unemptied, but said the yearly cost was $150,000. How was this figure reached when there is no measure of missing or unemptied bins?

Why doesn’t the city admit that soon it will be weighing and/or measuring our refuse and charging for disposal? Perhaps it wants the blame to rest on a future council or administration.

Meanwhile, the mayor’s tantrum at Monday’s council meeting regarding who should be responsible for naming streets made me wonder about the people we elect. It’s laughable to have the mayor say it doesn’t matter what other cities do, when he regularly compares us to (enter any western city’s name), saying we have lower taxes, utility costs, council stipends for communication allowances, etc.

It was very similar to his tirade against Coun. Darren Hill for daring to question a presenter who was espousing the same view as the mayor. Is this a dictatorship or a democracy? Joan Neufeldt Saskatoon