Truth Tarnished At City Hall: WHOPPER WATCH

“The review found that the City of Ottawa provides a high level of service for  residents and exceeds the Minimum Maintenance Standards set by the province. These findings  were further bolstered by resident engagement feedback, which found that residents were  generally satisfied with the current level of service for the City’s winter maintenance operations,  with some recommendations for improvements to residential roadway clearing and sidewalk  maintenance.”

Alain Gonthier, General Manager, Public Works Department

Probably what Gonthier said is true. Which, in its own peculiar way, is a problem.

Accordingly, his words are a whopper because they aren’t a whopper. Out of character at city hall. A whopper from rarity. Too bad.

Resident engagement feedback (“comments” methinks, given my acute translation skills honed over the years from studying municipalese) finds that people are mostly good with the service they are getting (which is what Happy Town News says about everything from “resident engagement feedback.” See translation above).

Engagement is manipulated and massaged from the tall foreheads at HTN so that everything is good. HTN would call hell tepid, the Arctic chlly, Alan Hubley warm, George Darouze bubbly.

Light-rail sinkholes would be “an aberration in the level-ality of street topography.” Derailments would be an interruption in service. A rail project is “on-time and on-budget” when it has been shown more repeatedly than post-bean dinner air quality that it was not.

So, from my limited experience confined to shovelling sidewalks, your agent would say that snow is cleared real OK here in River City … as it should be.

But with the beating truth has taken from HTN and city executives plus their cunning (though usually not cunning enough) tricks with words and actions, Gonthier, no doubt a fine man, could have his words composed by angels, written in fairy dew and delivered by Tinkerbell … and yet, trust at city hall has been destroyed with lies, lies of omission and cover-ups that few would believe him.

City hall could tell the truth but residents, so grizzled by mistakes and lies on Laurier Avenue, would run outside in the morning just to ensure that the sun rose in the east as forecast by HTN and wouldn’t be surprised if it didn’t.

So, in a nutshell holding a loose pin on a wonky LRT hub assembly, the residents have had their trust so eroded and disappointed by the word manufacturers at city hall that most missives are looked at as puddle of fabricated spit.

The truth is not for sale at The Bulldog but it is at city hall. And the denizens of city hall have sold their ethical souls to Lucifer so that their words mean nothing.

Words aren’t even words anymore. Words mean something, or once did. Donald Trump’s social media platform is called Truth Social making that product the pinnacle of mono-syllabic quackery. Figure that one out. Wow.

Once you lose trust, it’s almost impossible to get it back.

Sorry Alain Gonthier, it looks like you might have told the truth. Too bad other people ruined it for you.

Ken Gray

Tinkerbell: City hall is no Pixie Hollow.

For You:

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