The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
No one on city council is likely to campaign under the slogan "I'll put the cart before the horse" in the next municipal election. Yet that is just what council has done with the new student drop-off zone near McIsaac School Ecole McIsaac. The drop-off had already been open for several days Tuesday when council gave its final blessing by way of a public vote. Rather than wait for this crucial step, City Hall evidently gave its workers an early go-ahead to proceed with the project. This may seem minor, but the public should take notice. Not because the McIsaac drop-off was a bad idea Ð it wasn't Ð but because of the precedent City Hall has set. To be clear, before the drop-off was developed, council had approved first reading of a motion granting its authorization. This occurred at council's September 1 meeting, and everyone present was in favour. But nothing had been set in stone until Tuesday. To ensure that our elected officials have ample time to reflect on their decisions and digest public input, by-law alterations require council to vote favourably three times at at least two separate meetings. There was probably no reason to suspect enough councillors would change their minds to derail the drop-off. Perhaps they gave their verbal assurance they would again support the project on the third and final reading. But circumstances can and do evolve. Councillors are no different than the rest of us in that they change their minds, even if they never imagined doing so. What if, after okaying the first motion, several councillors were presented with evidence that the McIsaac drop-off was an ill-conceived idea? What if the majority of council could no longer in good conscience support it? The answer is, it would have been too late, unless of course council was ready to endure the embarrassment of ordering its workers to uninstall a drop-off City Hall had just ordered built. It is doubtful any councillor would vote their conscience in this kind of scenario. Vote against something that is already done? What's the point? It is not out of the realm of possibility, by the way, that councillors would switch their positions between votes. This past April, after green-lighting an initial motion giving themselves a five per cent pay raise, council backed off on the second reading. It was a surprising but prudent flip-flop. Following layoffs of HBMS contractors and workers, a boost to the local mill rate and, of course, the global recession, the public appetite for the raise could not have been smaller. It wasn't about the miniscule amount of money involved, but the principle. Go back to 2006 and the previous council similarly backtracked on an order to keep a popular fast-food vendor out of the Neighbours of the North Park parking lot. Council soon learned that the community was not on their side, so they let the vendor stay put. Then-mayor Dennis Ballard later called it one of the biggest misreadings of the public will he had seen in his time on council. Fortunately, both the pay hike and the vendor ban were reversible. Practically speaking, the McIsaac drop-off was not. It is evident and proper that all vote-requiring municipal measures, no matter how seemingly insignificant, need to wait until council has had its final say before being implemented. * * * Good luck to the Flin Flon Bombers, who open their regular season tonight in Melfort. Big things are expected this year, and fans of all ages are confident our boys will deliver! Local Angle runs Fridays.
