{"id":15167,"date":"2015-09-11T18:45:55","date_gmt":"2015-09-11T22:45:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ianchadwick.com\/blog\/?p=15167"},"modified":"2015-09-11T18:50:50","modified_gmt":"2015-09-11T22:50:50","slug":"17-pages-of-blather","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ianchadwick.com\/blog\/17-pages-of-blather\/","title":{"rendered":"17 Pages of Blather"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"SnakeZero point zero zero zero three eight. <\/strong>That’s the percentage of the population of Collingwood<\/a> who made the effort to comment on council’s much-touted, revised, 17-page code of conduct before it was approved, Monday night. That’s 0.00038%, based on an estimated 21,000 residents. In other words:\u00a0eight people.<\/p>\n

Only eight<\/strong> people out of 21,000 cared enough about council’s efforts to pump the bureaucracy to comment on the proposed code.<\/p>\n

Eight people. I hope they were<\/em> all residents. One, I’m told, was a member of council, so if you take that person out of the equation because that’s what he or she was elected to do, that leaves a mere seven residents commenting. That’s only 0.00033% of the population.<\/p>\n

Hardly a tsunami of public engagement.<\/p>\n

The rest, I suppose, were more concerned about things that actually matter: taxes, water rates (both of which this council raised), roads, sewers, sidewalks, potholes, parks and so on. These things are, however, not nearly as important to council which prefers to waste its time on grandstanding initiatives like revising the code of conduct.<\/p>\n

For eight people it was stirring stuff.<\/p>\n

The other 99.962% of us \u00a0– 20,992-plus residents – clearly couldn’t give a damn.<\/p>\n

Apparently this low response was such an embarrassment that the actual number of respondents is not mentioned anywhere in the staff report. The public just didn’t care. But around the council table, backs were patted and laudatory, saccharine statements were made for having accomplished such another landmark in governance ennui.<\/p>\n

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And yet, if you read the agenda for September 8<\/a> (starts P. 140), you’ll see three pages of comments from\u00a0this select few were included in the public record, but anonymously<\/strong>. The authors’ names are not shown.<\/p>\n

Since when are anonymous comments considered valid in a democratic and public dialogue? Anonymity is secretive: the opposite of openness and transparency in a democracy. Newspapers don’t allow anonymous letters. You can’t make anonymous campaign contributions. Why should the town allow anonymous comments to influence decision making?<\/p>\n

How can readers know these comments were actually made by residents if they are anonymous? Or that they were actually made by real people and not cobbled from some internet source or from some private conversations with councillors?<\/p>\n

More curious, is that these anonymous comments were given not only consideration, but many were allowed to change the policy even before council was allowed to see or respond to their comments. Staff comments show that wording was changed to suit the demands of the respondents before council could even respond or comment.<\/p>\n

Who approved that? Since when do anonymous outsiders determine town\u00a0policy? Shades of VOTE! You think maybe the only ones who chimed in with a comment were friends of the Politburo?<\/p>\n

An anonymous group, seven of whom were not elected, was allowed to determine town policy without any input on their changes from your elected officials. And this is supposed to be a democratic<\/em> process? An open and transparent<\/em> process?<\/p>\n

If you believe that, you’ve been hoodwinked. You bought the snake oil.<\/p>\n

As for the revised code itself, it’s as bad as expected: seventeen pages of blather that repeats content found in other legislation and policies, including:<\/p>\n