After Monday’s (July 21) council meeting in Banff, we here at the Outlook, much like many Banff residents, no doubt, can’t wait until the next municipal election in 2017.
After Monday’s meeting, we are already preparing to drastically increase the number of staff we’ll have on hand for the runup to the election – to accurately cover the dozens, maybe hundreds, of Banff residents who will throw their hats into the election ring, secure in the knowledge that, unlike the present council, they will know exactly how to run the town.
Judging from the vitriol directed at council at the Monday meeting, we’ll expect many faces in the standing room only crowd to be found on campaign signs around the town of Banff.
People who attend a public meeting in council chambers and toss around words like “spineless,” call for resignations, jeer and let out catcalls, throw out accusations of hidden agendas, charge that council is creating a “totalitarian society” and threaten that a decision on paid parking is “political suicide” must surely be ready to step into the breach and right the good ship called Banff.
Yes, Councillor Stavros Karlos dropping the F-bomb during the proceedings was over the top and likely unnecessary, but really, from our vantage point, it was pretty much in keeping with the spirit of the entire afternoon.
Mayor Karen Sorensen could have worn out a gavel while trying to keep some semblance of order and we feel council should get some credit for sitting through the entire meeting as their residents and neighbours took pot shots. Everyone was allowed to say their piece.
The problem now is, where does the paid parking issue go from here?
Clearly, nobody in the room on Monday believes a trial go at paid parking is anything but an easing into a permanent situation. Thus, anything less than the strongest possible data confirming paid parking absolutely won’t work in Banff won’t be believed by T-shirt wearing Banff Residents Against Paid Parking (BRAPP).
Anything remotely resembling data which supports the idea of paid parking will be seen as nothing more than confirmation of council’s hidden agenda.
Speaking of hidden agendas, we have to wonder at the thinking behind BRAPP speculation that their mayor and council are somehow trying to ruin the town for everyone.
As municipal politicians, Banff council isn’t under the constraints of provincial and federal politicians who jump to a party line and vote in tune with directives from leadership.
So that leaves Banff politicians, aside from Grant Canning and Ted Christensen, who voted against a paid parking trial, as being suspected of somehow benefitting from the assumed disastrous institution of paid parking?
It’s rather hard to imagine how the mayor and other councillors would benefit from paid parking. Possibly in their dark hearts they are embracing the destruction of the town they call home?
We suppose mayor and council could take the easy way out by doing nothing and cancelling the parking trial, put paid parking on the backburner forever, immediately put out tenders for an $18- or $20 million parkade (much favoured by many in attendance), then tally up what tax increase everyone would ante up to pay the structure off over a decade or so.
We can imagine the outcry against a council that boosted residential and commercial tax rates by five to 10 per cent yearly, say, to pay for a parkade.
Or, nothing could be done, which would seem to suit those who apparently don’t see a problem with parking as it now exists.
