Dear editor:

In the Jan. 15 issue of The Lake Report, Stuart McCormack, president of the Niagara-on-the-Lake Residents Association, wrote an article about the meaning of the engineer’s iron ring — an article without apparent purpose and one that looked out of place what with all the trials and tribulation articles involving town council’s decisions and town staff’s recommendations (“Letter: The meaning behind the engineer’s iron ring“).

I believe Mr. McCormack was actually reminding the recently appointed Jordan Frost, P.Eng. (appointed as director of public works and infrastructure) of his ethical responsibility and the humility denoted by the iron ring he wears.

The NOTL Residents Association is somewhat built on the idea that town council, for the most part, approves the recommendations of town staff, and if you can convince town staff that its recommendations can be constructively modified through solid fact-based intelligent arguments, then a positive workable alliance is achieved with outcomes that are both acceptable to the residents of Niagara-on-the-Lake and town council. A win/win for everyone in a friendly open forum.

Mr. Frost may be mandated with identifying the deficiencies and issues in both past and future real estate development applications filled with developers’ self advocating story lines. But, perhaps that aspect of his job description is absent, diluted or amorphous, and he will not be opining on the risk attributes of developments from a holistic perspective with the same intensity as one might hope.

We don’t know, and as they say time will tell — perhaps by the fall? A fall juncture where the NOTL municipal elections will be upon us.

In the meantime, the experiences of Mr. Steve McGuinness (referencing his Jan. 15 article, “The Forum: Future councils will inherit a colossal financial mess”), Ron Simkus (Parliament Oaks et al.), Kip Voege (St. Davids/Tawny Ridge’s infrastructure issues), and many others (too many to list herein), haven’t historically experienced the congenial logical fact-based discussions that people (had) hope(d) to achieve with town council/staff.

Input is not received well, and public presentations are seemingly there for optics — for council to say that the public had been consulted, but have their presentations been really considered/analysed or factored into council’s decision-making process?

What meaningful changes have resulted from all of these public presentations? Perhaps town council can list out some of the resident’s important/major recommendations that were implemented, or those that were not implemented? I doubt that they will oblige.

Requests for access to the town’s public documents that could confirm the existence of a variety of problematic items related to council’s decisions, such as infrastructure deficiencies (documents which town council and town staff should have reviewed when they did their due diligence and subsequent approvals) are rebuffed/seemingly withheld.

Town staff have declined to provide this kind of information referring the individual to the clerks department to discuss a Freedom of Information Act request, or leaving no alternative but to file a request under the Freedom of Information Act.

It appears that the town wants to administratively frustrate individuals who wish to review what should be public documents. Is this to be regarded as a strategy to obfuscate short-sighted/poor decision-making, or something else?

So, what do you do when town councill/staff don’t really want to accept your educated, well-thought-out facts/ideas aimed at improving the quality of the decision-making through a constructive methodological process, and instead it appears council/staff view these facts/ideas as possibly some sort of challenge to their authority or to the rationale behind their decision-making? Agreeing with residents might be tantamount to admitting inadequate due diligence?

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.

Well, do you keep trying to put more lipstick on in the hopes that date night will turn out better, or do you forget about the lipstick approach?

Gienek Ksiazkiewicz
St. Davids