To Whom It May Concern: Political Edition

[dramaqueen_23]

Dear My Fellow Ottawans,

I firmly believe that every citizen has a right to cast their vote as they see fit. That having been said...Larry O'Brien? LARYY O'BRIEN!!!? Is there a localized crack epidemic that someone forgot to tell me about? The man's campaign was a hodge-podge of vague muttering along the lines of "Um...TAX FREEZE and er...

Comments

Yeah ..

[xiz111]

That's pretty much what my reaction was, too to Larry O'Brien's election. It's potentially bad news for city funding for arts and heritage, for museums, for community centres, and, especially for any light rail projects. Basically, city council will vote on Bob Chiarelli's proposed project, and if it's shot down, we're back to square one, once again, with another rail system *MAYBE* being developed sometime in the next decade.

Sadly, though, it reinforces what I tend to see as a pretty depressing trend in Ottawa society .. that there are pockets of free-thinkers, and creativity, but there is a huge festering pot of cheapskates, narrow-minded nitwits, and mindless confirming NIMBY-ites.

Larry O'Brien appealed to these sorts of people .. he ran on the promise that he'd 'run the city like a business' .. except a city *ISN'T A BUSINESS*. A business exists to make a profit. A city exists because people live there. If there is any comparable analogy, a city is more like a non-profit organization than a business .. that it is specifically *DESIGNED* to run at the zero-profit level.

Larry O'Brien has had no experience in municipal politics, and figures that holding the line on taxes can be achieved by 'efficiency' (read, budget cuts, downsizing), and 'prioritizing' (read, killing off any programs that he figures aren't important) .. CBC had Alex Cullen on this morning, and he said it best .. that regardless of how little or how much is spent in city hall, the road will still need to be repaired, the garbage still needs to be picked up, the parks still need to be maintained and the snow still needs to be plowed. There are some expenses that simply can't be negotiated.

As for Rona Ambrose. I'm not surprised. I was driving when I first
heard about the 'Clean Air Act', and how it would set out targets to be achieved for 2050. To put that in perspective, I'll be 84 years old when those targets are supposed to be met.

Some days, this city full of narrow-minded, Lowell Green-listening, Walmart-shopping, SUV-driving boneheads really gets on my nerves.

Rawr.

Re: Yeah ..

[seanchaidh]

I love Cullen.