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Residents in Sooke are concerned about the imminent tax hikes to pay for the new sewer system. |
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Calendar of Events & Special Dates |
Welcome to the SLUDGE REPORT THE SLUDGE REPORT No 2 Sooke Council's 11th-hour decision to expand the area serviced by sewers makes a farce of the whole sewage planning process. The consultants took big expensive advertisements in the Mirror (They were charged the going rate, no special deals here) explaining the cost structure based on the original $16 million cost estimates. But even as these advertisements proclaiming the $16 million cost were appearing this council was changing its mind and boosting the sewer costs to a mind-boggling $24 million. Panic had apparently set in when this bunch of amateur politicians realized that confining the sewer construction to the Sooke core only was well beyond the ability of the residents (and the business communiy they toady to) to pay so a last-minute decision was made to share the load by expanding the area EVEN THOUGH ALL OF THE STUDIES TO DATE HAD BEEN BASED ON SERVICING THE CORE AREA ONLY. The SLUDGE REPORT notes that MLA RICK Kasper who hopes to get re-elected as a independent MLA in the next election is siding with the Sooke Council in its refusal to hold a referendum on the sewer issue. Perhaps it isn't worth commenting on because Kasper hasn't a hope in hell of getting re-elected anyway. However there is speculation that when he gets defeated Kasper will run for mayor of Sooke in 2002 because he loves the limelight. If he does he can expect the WRATH of WRATH for his stand on this issue...g'bye Rick baby it's back to bricklaying. March 23,2001 THE SLUDGE REPORT No 1 If the Sooke Municipal Council's ill-advised $24 million sewer project with its horrendous tax consequences is high in the agenda of the Sooke Municipal Council they have a peculiar way of showing it. The Council placed an advertisement in the Sooke Mirror on Wednesday March 21 that a meeting of the Sewage Committee would be held at 2 p.m. that day. But when the SLUDGE REPORT showed up to attend the meeting we found to our surprise, that the meeting was cancelled. Apparently there there were not enough councilors were interested enough to show up to make up a quorum. One lame explanation was that Wednesday was the mayor's day at the CRD board and the bureaucrat who scheduled the meeting had goofed. But The mayor is only an ex-officio member of the committee and the meeting could easily have gone on without him. But he wants to have his finger in every pie. No mayor, no meeting. The council is so gun-shy over the sewer issue and the committee wouldn't dare schedule the meeting without Big Ed, the boss being around. The SLUDGE REPORT asked Councillor Marcus Farmer a member of the committee, why it had been cancelled he said he has no idea but he speculated that it could have been "because Ed could't make it." The councillor, who was shuffling magazines at his father's Shopper's Drug Mart store in Sooke then went on to say that if the council gets the necessary grants, work on the sewer system could start a year from now - patent nonsense in light of the complexity of the sewer planning and grants approval process. But he's a councillor and he should know. And as for his Dad, Councillor John Farmer, who runs the store, and as chair of the sewer committee has been pushing the sewer project, what does he care about local tax increases, because he lives at Otter Point. And the timing of the Mirror advertisement announcing the date of the meeting makes a farce of the council's claim that its meetings are open to the public. The Mirror isn't even distributed to most homes in Sooke until late afternoon. The 2 pm meeting had it been held, would have been over by the time people learned about it. This council should adopt a motto: the public be damned." (Oh what fodder we have for the next election campaign) March 21, 2001 |
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