So Monday night’s council meeting was 50 minutes, which wouldn’t be so bad had it not been for the fact that agenda-wise, it should only have been about 10.
The topic that seemed to draw so much angst, it seems, was the motion on the table to hire an architect/consultant for the Central Park project; one councillor in particular, Councillor Ian Chadwick, seemed to think council needed to have an analysis of the public information collected to date and an update from the committee.
“It’s premature to go get drawings when we’ve had no report from the committee,” he said. “We don’t know the alternatives or the costs.”
Which would be fine, however, if council hadn’t passed — unanimously — this motion back in June:
THAT Council receive for information, an update on the Central Park Concept Development process and approve the revised project timeline;
AND FURTHER THAT Council approve the Steering Committee’s recommendation to obtain the services of an Architectural Design Firm to develop and cost preliminary design options.
It was a recorded vote. If you follow the link, you will note Chadwick voted in favour of that recommendation (hence the term, ‘unanimous’).
Which either means he didn’t pay attention to what he voted for a two months ago, or he was purposely playing silly bugger — which, in the case of this project, a project a lot of people in town want to see move ahead and not get caught up in silly politics, is just a stupid tactic…
