A few months back MooseJawToday.com did a survey on our local city council.
Respondents were given three options: get rid of the whole council, get rid of some, or don’t know.
Two in three wanted to get rid of the entire council. They got just over half their wish with only three council members returned by the vote.
Two councillors left to unsuccessfully run for mayor. A fresh face with no experience on council was elected mayor.
Two former councillors were elected and one was defeated for a new face on council.
Doug Blanc’s practical approach to issues will be missed by many with his defeat. He questioned things that didn’t make sense like the ridiculous decision to spend $7,000 on a consultant to count how many parking meters there are in the city.
That task could easily have been done by the commissionaires at no or little cost.
It was only a few thousand dollars but a bit here and there adds up to significant sums.
It’s my guess that the same survey four years from now possibly will bear similar results.
Voters around the globe are turning out existing governments for a fresh look. In doing so they make some strange choices to replace the old governments.
Moose Jaw is no exception to this trend in politics.
Voters are ticked off at governments for a wide range of matters from human rights issues to pocketbook concerns.
Human rights issues arise from changes to religious and racial populations with large blocs of voters feeling threatened.
Pocketbook issues seem foremost in people’s minds as inflation, caused and sometimes wrongly blamed on the COVID-19 pandemic, has increased prices of essential purchases to stratospheric levels.
The Moose Jaw civic election’s main issue was the condition of the roads with high taxes following a close second.
The higher property tax rates in recent years were needed to help finance the long road ahead of replacing roads and other infrastructure.
Progress has been made in the last six or seven years on improving the roads but so much more is left to achieve.
It will take another generation to get caught up and then the city will have to start over with newer roads that need rehabilitation.
The road issue and the less visible water and sewer main issues took several generations to develop into pressing matters needing immediate attention.
Successive councils over the years refused to build reserves to replace infrastructure, apparently believing the infrastructure would last forever.
And they kept chopping maintenance budgets, putting the city in a pickle.
Past councils that kept taxes down to keep being re-elected just downloaded these problems to future generations.
The new council will need a miracle to improve infrastructure as fast as people would like.
That suggests voters would be less frustrated by lowering their expectations of council.
Ron Walter can be reached at [email protected]
