Web posted on Friday, 11 January 2008
Is it time for a wholesale reworking of the Okanagan's local government structure? “How many of you know the definition of a camel? It’s a horse designed by a committee.” Well you know what you get with one committee, you can imagine what happens when 40 or 50 politicians from 3 different Regional Districts split up into 7 separate committees. If the purpose of the exercise was to provide a series of viable alternatives for Valley wide governance by those Regional Government members who do not sit on the Super Regional Committee and shine a light on various governance models that would not only be viable, logical, acceptable to the taxpayer and demonstrate a lower tax burden and increased efficiencies then it did not achieve this purpose.
If the purpose was to be able to say that regional politicians were consulted and were given opportunity for input and the Elite twelve on the Super Committee can say that they are cognizant and appreciative of this input then the gathering of politicians and bureacrabs succeeded. Now the Select regional committee can tick off that necessary chore and move on to an upcoming Council of Councils where the same exercise can be repeated so the March 30 deadline imposed by the Province can be met.
The next meeting will take place on Jan 31 in Kelowna, home of CORD where the regional district bureaucrabs await their fate and payouts if they cannot find a reason to be employed in a region where most of the functions that count are handled by the now dominate municipalities of Kelowna and Westbank who comprise almost 88% of the population of CORD and 87% of the property assessment in the area.
It was a meeting that demonstrated the ability of politicians to use semantics and politically correct language as the larger municipalities took dead aim at neutering the smaller electoral and rural areas as they marched in lockstep towards the March 31 deadline and the preordained forced annexation or amalgamation of our country and rural cousins. The only squeal of outage, unless it was expressed afterwards directly to the assembled media in their post meeting interviews, was by area B Director Cliff Kanester who closed the meeting by asking who would be appointed the Dictator in charge. The facilitator chose to ignore this inquiry.
It was a meeting that consumed 6 hours, produced absolutely nothing concrete but allowed the provincially mandated governance review to progress by holding up the mantle of constructive consultation with all the Political stakeholders. Free coffee and juice and tasty muffins were the reward for the 10-15 observers whom endured the ordeal.
http://www.valleygovern.ca/ Super regional Committee website
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