When a municipal council is all but replaced after an election it is not unusual to have a bit of a learning curve. However, with nearly a year under their belts, it is time for this council to start shaping up, there is a lot to do and they don't seem to have any urgency. Part of the problem might be the fact this council was elected on a protest platform. Basically, if you yelled loud enough about what the previous council was doing wrong with development and stamped your feet hard enough about traffic , you were going to get elected. That was the easy part. The campaign is over and many of our new councillors haven't quite clued in. Coun. Marni Fedeyko is taking her power to the people message to such extremes that it is becoming absurd. After months of transit consultations and a town-wide survey, she has decided to do her own survey. Unfortunately, it seems that Coun. Fedeyko freezes if one of her ideas is not met with complete consensus. First it was the trailer bylaw, then speed limits and now transit. Council is a thankless job, people are going to hate the decisions you make, eventually you have to get off the fence and make a decision. Constant concessions waste time. We had high hopes for Coun. Alex Reed. He joined council with a wealth of political and bureaucratic experience, which could have made him a voice of efficiency and understanding to the process of running a town. While we don't expect or want councillors to be rubberstamps to administration, we do expect them to be professional and do what's best for the community. Reed has done neither. To be frank, his conduct with administration is rude and aggressive and the transit issue shows he thinks preaching fiscal conservatism is a shield against bad decisions making. He has taken a page out of Coun. Morgan Nagel's book who seems to pride himself on being the voice of dissent at the table, regardless if it is good for the town or not. The latest issue was his blind protest of paying to upgrade the restaurant space at the sports centre into something that leasers might actually want. That space was done wrong to begin with, the chances anyone was going to rent when it needed $125,000 in upgrades was wishful thinking (to put it kindly). Unfortunately, where Nagel was mostly alone before, which meant he could grandstand all he wanted without grinding council to a halt, he now has like-minded company at the table. Coun. Patrick Wilson was up until the transit debate doing well. He seemed to be balanced in his approach. Unfortunately, his decision to remain at the table during a discussion about transit, which included some councillors talking about taxi subsidies as an alternative, clearly violates the Municipal Government Act's Section 170 on pecuniary interest. Whether he believes there is a financial implication to transit coming to town or not is irrelevant. Stalling the transit discussions is a great example of how this council just can't seem to get into gear. There are millions of dollars in GreenTRIP funding for initial setup – money this town will lose if it is not spent. Initial capital costs are arguably the biggest barrier to a bus service and the town has it covered by grants. This town has a connectivity problem and a traffic problem. Transit would help with both but despite all councillors agreeing on those two issues during the campaign, they can't unify behind the most obvious solution due to political ideology or the fear someone might not like it.
