Council doesn’t deserve a raise
Dear Editor:
At one time the mayors in our municipalities were awarded about one dollar for each person living in that municipality, and aldermen and women, today’s municipal councillors, received about 50 cents.
That was not salary. It was and still is, intended as an element of compensation for time spent away from whatever they may, could, or should otherwise have been doing, to serve as our community leaders.
Our municipal councillors are not salaried employees. They are trustees, elected to provide direction for the administration in the municipalities where they were elected.
As such, they are responsible for adopting, maintaining, and implementing the municipalities’ bylaws, and to establish committees to oversee all the different activities the municipalities are engaged in, including the development and maintenance of all kinds of infrastructure.
Where it is falling apart in Kelowna is very simple.
Our councillors have arbitrarily decided to ignore the benefits of the talent and experiences our city managers represent, and instead arbitrarily micro-manage some of those activities. The planning department is a classic example.
Our city councillors are not professional planners, and have no concept of all the disciplines and issues that need to be considered developing and producing an Official Community Plan, a mandatory and essential long-term plan for orderly development and growth of any municipality.
Instead, they have been overwhelmed by greedy developers, who have been allowed to transform our city into a massive out-of-control development disaster, with skyscrapers popping up helter skelter in our residential areas, insisting adding several storeys to a building is a minor variance.
The UBCO disaster is a blatant demonstration of the lack of respect for other people’s rights and properties, and contempt for our sacred OCP.
A planner with any savvy would have located those towers at the foot of and between the Knox and Dilworth mountains, with generous and beautiful parks and playgrounds wrapped around them, away from the noise and the traffic, in a more peaceful tranquil environment.
Instead, we build high-density housing on the noisiest streets and avenues in our city with balconies spitting distances from the sidewalks and homes being evacuated because nobody knows when and how to stop this madness.
No social conscience, not a single thought for the welfare, comfort, safety and development of our children.
No, they do not deserve a raise. They should be fired and replaced.
But somebody voted for them.
Andy Thomsen
Kelowna