[rthomasd]

It occurs to me that we need an almost clean sweep of current council. There's a few good members (Lane for example) but the Logy Bay Rd sidewalk issue from last week showed for me just how corrupt some council members are - Puddister seconded by Breen moved a motion to build a sidewalk on Logy Bay Rd at a cost of $54,000 even though Puddister is not the Ward member, no committee was consulted and no money allocated for it (to be taken from next year's budget). So, it's probably too late in the season for it to get done so Puddister is just playing politics. Members approving the vote were: Okeefe, Hann, Breen, Collins, Puddister, Galgay. So, the Mayor cast the deciding vote and I think normally he should not have, since the motion to bypass normal Council procedures, allocate money from next year's budget and for something not vetted by any committee should have stood on it's own. But hey, Doc's outta here with another pension (is that two or three public-paid pensions for him?) so he didn't care.

While I don't have any particular love for Danny Williams, it appears the Council and City bureaucracy are putting the screws to his project. City development regulations seem to be setup to give Councillors the maximum ability to approve/reject projects - subject to their own political/business whims - you can't even build a three story building in a commercial zone without jumping through a lot of red-tape , changing zoning and kiss-a*ss because when it comes down to it, an individual councillor seems to be able to side-track any development they want. Even the way Council 'debates' allows any particular councillor to spread miss-information on the go-round at meetings and there's no opportunity to counter it if you've already had your say - so no debate at all.