12-21-2016, 04:58 PM
(12-21-2016, 04:52 PM)danbrotherston Wrote:(12-21-2016, 03:53 PM)Markster Wrote: You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it approve a $26 per household tax increase.
What you can do is encourage the public to keep talking about it, until they convince the horse council that it's worth it the cost.
Council or staff? Staff recommended against the increase (and also seemed to do insufficient work to approve it at that council meeting). I'm not sure how much power staff has, or how much staff is trying to please council, or how much council and staff interact before the official recommendation (i.e., did staff know that the majority of council wouldn't have supported a recommendation for sidewalk maintenance?).
Learning the ropes of municipal politics is interesting.
Regardless, this issue shouldn't be dropped. The lack of sidewalk maintenance is just shameful now. I wish I could drag council (and staff) out by their ears and watch the mother and daughter struggle to help their elderly grandmother (assumptions about familial relations) over the snow bank on the sidewalk I watched from the bus yesterday.
Shameful is the right word for that.
My street doesn't have sidewalks. It can be several days before it is cleared well enough for soemone using a walker to be able to get through it. I'm sure travel by wheelchair is impossible for a significant part of winter.