Another Madhatter's Tea Party

I attended either the last meeting of the GVS Commission or the first meeting of the emasculated GVS committee, I'm still not sure which. With Coun. Baumbrough from Vernon chairing the meeting and after delegations from Thompson-Okanagan Tourism Association and Partners for a Safe and Healthy Community the meeting stumbled into the topic of GVS and whether it was a committee or commission and what did all this mean.

Mayor Oglow of Armstrong, recently elected as NORD Chairman was present and explained how he saw future committee appointments being handled. He seemed to indicated that he would base his decision based on recommendations from the Coldstream and Vernon Councils. The Area Reps naturally would serve on the committee and the Water Rep would be a welcome addition, with the proviso that he only vote on water matters.

Various decision making scenarios were discussed by Baumbrough and Coun. Malerby of Coldstream trying to get a sense of how this would make the Committee as efficient and transparent as the Commission had been and whether this was in the best interest of the concerned areas taxpayers. (Such matters of why delegations would make a pitch to GVS when the ultimate decision of their requested funding etc. was in the hands of a NORD vote.)

Coun Beardsell probed with questions about the errors and illegalities allegedly committed by the Commission and tried to get Mayor Oglow to direct the Nord Administrator B. Reardon to table a full report of these errors so the new committee could learn from these past transgressions. This request was left unanswered.

Rep. Stan Fields brought up the conflicting legal advice that apparently NORD and Vernon had received re the actual removal of delegated authority of the GVSC Commision. Mayor Lippert, as he said throughout the discussions, seemed to wish to move ahead with a properly configured committee and hopefully the legal opinions and past history would gather dust on a shelf.

The 'committee' decided to set up a meeting to be called by Oglow to include the GVS committee chair, and the CEO's of Vernon, Coldstream and NORD to see if they could come up with terms of reference for the new committee and discuss its future. This meeting would serve as a basis for a meeting in the New Year of the GVS Committee members and the full NORD meeting. (Naturally this would have to be meeting Open to the public and media?)

Don Quixote Note:

I fail to see why a committee would require the attendance of a $120/hour interim GVSC administrator. Maybe it was only for this one meeting ! Hopefully this will be resolved in the near future to the benefit of the local taxpayers. Curiouser and curiouser! Saying goodbye to the Mad Hatter I knew that I would enter the more sane world of a Vernon Finance Committee meeting later this afternoon.