Dear Editor:
During the last election there was much talk of transparency and accountability by every one of the members ultimately elected to Whitewater Region municipal government.
Yet almost all of them seem to be quite OK with a recent breach in procedures by the top bureaucrat – the Whitewater CAO. In fact Councillor Dave Mackey went so far as to publicly declare, “As for going over the policy by $3,000, the CAO can be trusted with making decisions,” leaving one to wonder what level of policy breach would not be acceptable to this councillor?
If the CAO overspent by $25,000 would this be OK? Would $100,000 be OK — since this is a relatively small amount in a Whitewater budget of $8-plus million? Further, how many times would it be OK for the CAO to do this as other councillors seemed to think that since the full $13,000 had not yet been spent, the actions of the CAO were fine?
Based on that line of reasoning the CAO could then enter any contract for any amount and then bring it to the Council for approval after the fact – but before cheques were written and she would (then) still be “acting within her responsibility” as another councillor opined, or would be “following policy” as yet another one said – while another summed up the entire problem with this matter by stating, “Why do we have a CAO if we are going to micro-manage?” Yes, why indeed?
The question in return however would be, Why does Whitewater Region need any councillors at all if they are not going to manage the interests of their constituents? In fact, there seems to be an endemic Culture of Political Correctness that very often prevents municipal government from acting professionally in the best interests of the taxpayers due to concerns they will offend a relative or a local friend. Instead of doing their elected duty and challenging each and every tendering contravention that manifests itself – they just “go along to get along”. With this approach one can only wonder if there are a number of other similar contraventions that we just aren’t yet seeing.
Councillor Charlene Jackson has it right! This project should have been properly scoped and then tendered. The CAO should be told to cancel the contract and cease any further contraventions of the tendering policy guidelines.
Given past council experience with tendering issues, it is troubling that we must again call attention to the fact the tendering bylaw policy has been contravened. The point being that the tendering policy bylaws represent the rules of conduct by which the business of our municipality is to be conducted – without exception. My question is “Why does the council have such rules if they are not going to abide by and enforce them?”
Howard Winters, Cobden
