I was of the opinion that the City Hall was the place where all the very smart and expensive people we have entrusted to run our city work. But over the past few years I'm almost of the opinion, they are neither smart; nor do they work that hard, but they are still very expensive.
One example is the snow clearing debate, which I promised myself I wouldn't mention again, but sometimes, like all taxpaying citizens, how can you ignore it.
There is something you would think the people on our council or the people who run the works department would have noticed. They keep the highways open without too much packed snow building up all winter. If you have two eyeballs and other working parts of your anatomy, you might have noticed they do it with trucks, mounted with under belly snow plows that clear the traveled portioned of the road. Later they clean it up with the very expensive, costly to maintain graders.
Surprisingly we do have trucks with under bellies. They have been observed running around with their blades up, with at least six inches of snow being packed on the streets.
There are people on our city council who are interested in the concerns of the taxpayers and let them know what is happening and get chastised for it. I don't think there is any place for, what appears to be, a secret society within City Hall. As citizens we elect them and pay their wages. As taxpayers we should be in tuned to their every move.
There are still some who sit, year by year, like drift wood in a back water of the Fraser River and become water logged and seem oblivious of what is going on around them.
Maybe it's time for some new blood in our city council and got rid of some of these relics of the past, who seem to be lead by costly opinions from people far removed from our city and forget about using good old common sense.
Mel McConaghy
Prince George
