City Needs Top Public Needs In Consultations: BENN

The city produces, post-consultation, a report that is euphemistically called What We Heard. If this report was to be titled in a manner consistent with the truth in advertising laws, it might be What We Chose to Listen To.

The report is basically a selection of feedback from the attendees to the leading and facile questions asked in surveys, or to the one-sided (i.e. far from objective) presentation. From time to time, the report will include a non-supportive comment or two. Controversial items along the lines of “didn’t like the shade of green used to depict the park” or “there wasn’t enough emphasis on my arcane self-serving issue”.

So no, neither staff nor elected officials want independent recordings of their public sessions. They don’t want independent verification of the limited scope of the session. They do not want independent recordings of questions asked but not answered. They do not want independent recordings of the manner in which they have attempted to manipulate the session to show support for a poorly conceived recommendation based on incomplete analysis.

What both staff and councillors want is a scrubbed down report that tells them, and the members of the public who did not attend, that staff did a great job and that the public is supportive of the recommendations. Independent recordings provide evidence that is contrary to this objective.

Cynically yours, with three plus decades of scar tissue to show for the effort.

Ron Benn, a finance executive, has been a member of the Centrepointe Community Association for the better part of three decades.

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