Wednesday, January 31, 2007

Councillor's Embarrassing Admission?

What would you think of any Municipal Politician who many weeks before had voted in favor of an airport lease contract and now says that he has, after the fact many weeks later, finally looked at the competitive rates of municipal airport leases and now is "very comfortable" with having previously voted for passing the airport lease rates,......weeks ago?

Excuse me but why did he vote in favor of the lease weeks ago when he only now after the fact is finally "comfortable" with his voting decision? Was he just a little comfortable before but voted for it anyway? Does he always trust and vote with what the municipal administration recommends despite maybe not having all the information? Or does he have to spruce up on his homework more before he makes a decision? How about other past decisions? Same process? Or is there an alternative answer(s)?

Not knowing the answers to these questions and many obvious others, to save any undue finger pointing embarrassment without more information would be wrong. See, at least this Editor wants to have all the information before passing any judgement!

It seems to this Editor that perhaps a lot more councillors were not clear about the lease rates and their competiveness and comparison to industrial rates. Yet they still voted in favor! Maybe that's the explanation for the Grandstand fiasco. Yet only one councillor asked the hard questions. So now some partial answers are coming back weeks after it was voted on! Maybe the detailed correct answers would have been better served at that time before the vote!

We first commented about the airport on January 11th with tons of comments. But really $0.24 cents a sq foot! Still hard to believe. Even this Editor would still ask tons more questions like how come industrial and commercial tenants just down the street pay $8.00 to $18.00 a sq foot? What empirical facts on overall financial justification for the airport is there, direct & indirect? Do the mom & pop operations pay the same as the corporate biggies at the airport? Why & why not? And finally why not get an independent assessment on the lease rates as Richter asked? And finally what reasons are there not to tear it down to be replaced by a humongous resort casino or similar large scale developement to help out over taxed Township taxpayers? Only in Langley you say?
...

No comments:

Post a Comment