Salt Spring to be In Corporate or Not.

I know a lot of people on Salt Spring are grappling with the incorporation issue, the study, the vision, and the costs. I think study's projection that rate payers will only face an additional $15 per $100,000 assessed value is initially unrealistic to imagine given the likely immediate call for a town hall and all the extra cost that that one item alone will entail.

But realistically it has been said that while Bowen Island's (incorporated) taxes went up substantially, Salt Spring Island's taxes over the same period have gone up more so by almost 300%.

So you look at that and you wonder where and which taxing institutions are the culprit in the mix and what can truly resolved through incorporation?  Two notables jump out right away of course and they are the fire department which has gone from approximately $700,000 annual budget to closing in on $3,000,000 and the ever reliable annual budget increases of that feel good organization known as the Islands Trust, up from approximately $4,000,000 to well over $7,000,000 now. It should be noted that in years where we have had an incorporation study and possible referendum, the Islands Trust has held the line on tax increases, so there is always a silver lining in just doing a study and threatening to incorporate. ;-)

I will admit I voted against incorporation the last time and even help spearhead the NO effort with the image below...

I think between Eric Booth and myself we dove into a public discourse on the potential financial impact with our typical Capricornian concerns and alas in retrospect, Eric was right, taxes will go up anyway!

However, it is important to realise that while it is presumed that a centralized governance can be more efficient in allocating tax dollars according to community priorities, the incorporation study repeatedly mentions that that existing water boards, the fire department board, the Parks and Recreation Commission, Transportation Commission and other boards of Trustees will likely maintain their status at least in an advisory role to a town council. So representation will only become greater and possibly more effective in managing the lack of budget prioritization under our current de-centralized governance. To this I am all ears and hope to see how the final report factors this in.

One conundrum that still holds me back from choosing to incorporate has to do with the loss of power that ratepayers will have once a municipal council takes over and ratepayers lose their exclusive referendum-based option to vote for or against tax increases. In our current system we generally have referendums on all big money proposals and only property owners can vote on whether they wish to support this or that tax increase. Under a municipal model, and correct me if I am wrong, council would make these decisions and even if they did offer to hold a referendum, all island residents, not just property owners would have the right to vote. This is significant as it would leave ratepayers open to tax increases approved by everyone regardless of whether they were impacted tax-wise. This is a biggie for ratepayers to consider because as much as it can be annoying to be voting on every big project, it has been ratepayers' exclusive right to decide on which tax increases they favour. Savings on reduced Islands Trust fees may balance this out, hard to say.

The other issue that often follows incorporation, besides responsibilities for police and road maintenance which I think need much more detailed flushing out, is the individual impact of fees that council will come up with for things like business licensing and parking tickets that are often the bread and butter cash cows of municipal budgets.

I would certainly like to hear some pro-incorporation views and financial stats that would help clarify some of the positives because while I am all for a more centralized prioritization of our tax dollars, I worry the same old advisory commissions and boards will be there to maintain their fiefdoms of taxation while a municipal council grows a whole new level of governance expenditure.

EXTREMISM ALERT!! $6,250,000 to fight 11 building fires a year?

It certainly can get a little hair raising for taxpayers on Salt Spring Island watching how independent organizations like the Fire Dept. Board operate. They do so with an impunity that only volunteers can safely do without worrying about being personally liable for the decisions they make. We see a lot of this sometimes laudable, independent, wild west flair among groups freely taxing us in our unincorporated district. We need to contain it.

The problem in this day and age is that money is in short supply and the taxpayer is fatigued by the mega-projects we've had to digest over the last few years. It is like the next planner wants to out do the previous one as we snowball into yet another architect's big idea! The audacious nature of dreaming up a monster fire hall plan while propagandizing it into a full blown Emergency Service Building Project takes balls but it defies logic given our recent census numbers! At just over 10,200 people now 'associated' with Salt Spring Island, the myth of Salt Spring's projected massive population growth can finally be put to bed. If anything, projects like the new fire hall can safely be scaled back to be a lot more modest and reasonable! And well they should be!

Just saying. In 2008 there was an unusual blip on the screen with the financial collapse mostly in the US yet the Federal Government knee jerked out some make-work money so we could spend $7,000,000 on an edifice to that vanishing medium called the printed book. One wonders how on Earth we can dial back peoples' expectations after such a spectacular extravagance as the new Library. Now we find ourselves, as taxpayers hardly able to compete with that kind of 'Manna from Heaven' and still we are told we need that kind of money this time for a really important emergency service centre. Fair enough but in this case SIZE MATTERS.

We need to chill for a bit and re-examine our priorities which is probably a governance study over most anything else. If these decisions were to go through a responsible central council like in a... wait for it... MUNICIPALITY, surely the smart people of Salt Spring Island would prioritize peoples' tax monies in a far more efficient and caring manner. Just saying.

I refuse to vote YES for an extravagant security blanket in the face of the astronomical odds of a geological event... and believe or not, I can do that and still "support the troops". We are all very proud of our Fire Department and the brave men and women who service this outfit but this current plan uses fear of the unknown next 'disaster' to attempt to extort far too much for far too little actual community need.

Moderation is all you need! --- and then something quite adequate is possible to support. A NO Vote this time on October 23rd and 26th will ensure that happens.

Extreme Standby Position

Over time, which always marches forward, these little or big projects take on legs of their own. As Mr. Schubart of the Fire Dept. board in a candid moment revealed at a recent meeting, in so many words; the plan (for a new fire hall) took on a life of its own! and it became as of Sept. 16th, the "Emergency Services Building Project" It was not amusing to think that an inanimate proposal could actually grow to such proportions or that Mr. Schubart would think that people voting in a referendum to spend $6,250,000 might not be interested in a line by line look at where and what the budgeted money was going to be spent on! Especially with some line items estimated at between a fuzzy $60,000 and as much as $250,000.

No critique of such a good example of Salt Spring Extremism should go without at least offering ideas for other solutions however late in the game they may come. If you have any please comment. It actually would benefit the Fire Dept. to hold off on this decision until perhaps a more modest proposal were presented. My argument with it is less about immediate costs and more about ongoing maintenance, lives, protecting property and island house insurance rates. One of the best decisions the fire dept. made was to locate the two satellite stations at Central and in the Fulford Valley, this apparently saved over a million in house insurance payments. I am not sure what those installations cost but with an annual fire dept. budget of $2,375,000 I think the $6500 dollars a day we pay for this standby service is probably the par for the course considering it now features 5? unionized firepersons and a couple of paid employees?.

The reality is we could use a couple more of those satellite stations, one at the north end and one at Beaver Point or even Izabella point. If we are going to approve $6,250.000 expenditures why are we so focused on a huge centralized building as opposed to spreading this service more island-wide? All of our lives and the saving of our homes, in the dreadful event of a fire may depend on it and that should be the focus of any fire dept. should it not? It is after all a standby emergency service and it should be within reach of actually accomplishing its mission in emergencies; to save lives and protect the actual property. Centralization of this particular emergency service makes it out of reach, in terms of cost and effectiveness with absolutely no sense putting all eggs in one basket particularly in the event of an earthquake just does not seem a good idea for this kind of mega expense.

I think when special interest groups and organizations seeking more of our tax dollars use the insipidly overused notion that "it is only going to add so many dollars a week or whatever to property taxes" they do so with a blind-sided monocular vision because it simply all adds up a start point in an ever increasing amount once it is on the tax requisition. Since taxes rarely ever go down it is quite honestly a huge error in perspective to presume these are the costs of any service. We should all remember the 0% tax on food when the GST came in, while it quelled some public outrage to the GST, it was set as 0% to simply allow the tax to go forward on the books so that it could easily be raised later.

Sure audit all organizations who receive our tax dollars but...

As always whether it is millions of tax dollars to the Islands Trust year after year or millions to remote locations in Canada for the sake of feigning an Arctic foothold of Sovereignty there is very little clarity for tax payers as to how the money is allocated once these organizations establish and solidify their conduit into our wallets.

In so many cases from Unemployment Insurance to Social Services of any kind it is fundamentally the cost of administration and the requisite bureaucracy that absorbs most of the tax piechart with fewer trickle down dollars actually reaching those in need.

This percentage could so easily be reversed in favour of those in need by computerizing the entire network of wealth redistribution in one simple guaranteed annual income suppliment for those below the poverty line (which is what $50,000 a year now?) Whatever it is, taxpayers are being severely gouged by fiscal administration costss and those in need are falling by the wayside as collateral damage whether they are First Nation's people or the needy and homeless of any ethnicity from coast to coast.

Every Government service department needs a major upgrade and all wealth re-distribution needs to be streamlined to end this endlessly squanderous use of a majory of our tax dollars spent distributing a minimum of the total available. Get the computers to spit the cheques out regularly and remove the middle-management-person who is often only there to value judge each recipient with an annoying worthier than thou attitude towards the poor, all the while enjoying a cushy and expensive admin job at the tax payers' pleasure.

Sure there should be audits done regularly but you won't find the problem is with recipients but rather bureaucrats still occupying positions from a former century of manual labour where none is needed anymore. I pay my taxes by cheque and I would prefer the government redistribute that wealth as efficiently as possible, I am not in the slightest bit concerned about a few odd people taking advantage of government services, those few lay-abouts are still cashing their cheques regularly and feeding our sputtering economy back with the money the government takes from all of us. It is called the Great Circie of our Monetary-based Life.

On Appeal: Guilty As Charged

It may have been like pulling teeth to get the system to appreciate the concerns of taxpayers for the whole sordid conflict of interest case against our former Trustees but upon successful appeal it was clarified Friday in no uncertain terms. Elected officials are not allowed to start their own societies, become directors of those societies and then use their status as elected officials to vote public funds to their societies without declaring their conflict of interest.

Most of us thought it was an open and shut case right from the get go but when elected officials have unlimited access to public funds to defend themselves win or lose it all becomes a major cat and mouse game. The taxpayer is highly disadvantaged having to pay out of their own pocket additional money just to defend the public interest in a case of conflict of interest 101 that should never have gone on this long.

I fully appreciate the concerned members of our community who felt the incredible importance of this issue enough to petition the courts, lose and then appeal it, again at their own considerable expense. To Norbert Schlenker and the orginal gang of 15, Ted Bartrim, Alison Cunningham, Harold Hill, Malcolm Legg, my good friend Dietrich Luth, Victoria Mihalyi and Mark Toole, a big thankyou. I am sorry that it cost so many tens of thousands of hard earned dollars, time and cash on behalf of taxpayers but if it prevents future opportunisitic secret funding by our elected officials then it may all have been worth it, on principle alone. And thanks again to public videographer Jill Treewater for capturing the essential evidence that proved the case. I hope my small cash contribution helped in some way too.

The appeals court made its strongest point when it stated: “The object of the legislation (Conflict of Interest) is to prevent elected officials from having divided loyalties how to spend the public money. One’s own financial advantage can be a powerful motive for putting the public interest second but the same could also be said for the advancement of the cause of the non-profit entity, especially by committed believers in the cause, like the respondents, who as directors were under a legal obligation to put the entity first”.

I think it would behoove the former Trustees to come clean now and apologise to the community for patronizing the petitioners and polarizing the electorate against each other on an issue that was as easy to understand as any we have seen come before the courts, it has cost way too much at this point. I certainly will be looking to Trust Council to refund the taxpayers for the massive cost of this indefensible court case in lue of any attempt to raise their budgets this year..

Paul Marcano Vesuvius

Bandwagon Believers

Warren Buffet recently reiterated a simple truism re: Gold "bandwagon investors make their own Truth... for awhile". I have always extrapolated on such truisms to explore how far you can take them in understanding a deeper truth. Ie: "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder" could be broadly rephrased to suggest that "Beauty is in the I of the beholder... along with everything else." One's perceptions even as they are enhanced by technology are still limited by the narrow bandwidth of our human faculties and while we seek to arrive at fundamental conclusions we can rely on, they are forever to be limited by our simply not knowing all the variables and the changing condition of those variables.

Today's access to information over the internet is pretty much an unfiltered array of soapboxes, like this one, with every possible notion and nuance that such a broad spectrum of humanity can conjure up and yet, it is still limited by the level of skill one has in cross-referencing, verifying sources and the real work of researching a topic.

Getting back to "the beholder" I mean to say information from sources other than the internet, primarily ones own experience and observations. As I said, I rely on truisms more than long dissertations because I want to analyse for myself my more immediate experiential perceptions to understand what is actually observable and verifiable within my capacity to do so.

So if "bandwagon investors make their own truth", then I would naturally extrapolate from that that "bandwagon believers make their own truth" as well and if we bring that chicken home to roost we can see what we are up against in our local politics, particularly environmental changes and the general belief that close to $7,000,000 worth of Islands Trust bureaucracy is somehow protecting our environment without even the purchase of one acre of land to preserve. That increasing the budget on one hand and yet spending a further $400,000 in a navel gazing exercise to 'explore a trite policy statement' is somehow a a justifiable or efficient use of our tax dollars.

It all adds up to an extremism that we need to excoriate by seeking to contain The Islands Trust to their simple land planning mandate. Writing long reasoned letters to Trust Council is useless when they openly admit that they are simply playing a numbers game of counting the yeas and the neys as to whether the public is accepting or rejecting their proposed budget increases.

Needless to say, they should take that proposed $400,000 'policy statement discussion' and subtract it from their tax requisition and somehow continue to explore ways to trim their insatiable squandering of our tax dollars on this endless ideological fixation on environment and how it changes like every other aspect of the Universe we know and love.

Weird Science

Be nice if these guys could get on the 'sane' page. I am talking about new age 21st century freakin' climatologists. It is more like we are witnessing the birth of a new religion with all the classic elements in a kind of tired recipe that most religions are founded on; guilt, wrathfull gods of nature, humanity's sinful ways, heathen deniers and a huge appetite for donations.

One minute you are reading "Met Office releases new figures which show no warming in 15 years (since 1997). The figures suggest that we could even be heading for a mini ice age... Based on readings from more than 30,000 measuring stations, according to the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit", then the next news cycle and blogs galore - suddenly all those scientists are the bad scientists who are irresponsible and clueless.

From the public's non-scientific mindset and with access to this deluge of contradictory data, one wonders about 1 or 2 degree graphic charts expanded vertically to dramatically show some kind of change, any change at all. The so-called hockey stick graph goes higher depending on the proportionate use of graphical design accentuation... dare I say, I miss the days when you could trust science, even its theories. Now there seems an emotional fervour that does not instill much trust at all, in fact it is almost evolved to a faith based system of sorts since only the high priestscientists are supposedly 'in the know'.

Meanwhile, sadly a friend of mine sits out on the deck of a local pub imagining he is on the deck of the Titanic. Any disciplined religion or science that brings on that sort of hopelessness is surely suspect for its extremism.

Being only a virtual realist, I am not sure where that line goes too far over into despair, but it can't be healthy.

Solution: disconnect from the madness, pull the plug on your radio and TV, forget the 11:00 o'clock news blues and then, when you are left to your own resources, you shouldn't find anything quite so urgent as the subtle realization that you are dreaming!

Like now?... http://vimeo.com/35396305

Pecuniary Interest versus Procedural Irregularities

In spirit I supported the Petitioners on behalf of taxpayers, however I was disappointed that the Petitioners themselves neglected to pursue the front and centre issue that a video appeared to show were procedural irregularities.

Rather the Petitioners seemed, from the judgement, to have prioritized inferring direct or indirect pecuniary interest and requesting disqualification. This kind of inference was noteably lacking in evidence or proof despite the structural aspects of the societies allowing for potential remuneration of directors who might one day be ex elected officials. The Judge needed evidence not inference.

Consequently, the judge could only go so far as to conclude in part that..."in these circumstances, the petitioners concerns are understandable. In the sphere of local government politics, it would be in everyone's best interests to ensure that future local government meetings follow properly transparent procedures". Earlier he found that our CRD director had been imprudent yet did not go so far as to say improper in a similar case. His final judgement was not particularly surprising.

Suffice to say that that acknowledgement and the Islands Trust's own "How to Stay out of Trouble" guidelines to conflict of interest issues are about the best we can expect coming out of the community addressing this important issue.

Are Smart Meters too Smart for their own Good?

Nary a change goes by the board on Salt Spring Island where there is not some extreme group protesting change, as if it were not the fundamental Operating System of the Universe. I think I preferred when it was Global Warming, at least that was tangible, but climate change? How innocuous can you get?

So I'll take two Smart Meters thanks. Why? because the state of artificial intelligence is an unreasonable fear and I fault BC Hydro for choosing such a loaded name for a simple upgrade. What would have been wrong with just saying everyone is getting a new Hydro Meter? People like 'new and improved'. Don't they know that people have an inherent fear of computers to begin with let alone claiming they have humanistic characteristics like intelligence or Smarts?

Anyway just thought I would mention that I would at least like the freedom of choice from my fellow islanders, given that they declared an undemocratically arrived at decision, island-wide ban without asking me. I am hoping that the wireless feature lets me more carefully see why my Hydro bill is where it is at. Too many electronics? Nope, I like to be warm in the winter and I don't like the acrid pollution of wood burning stoves that environmentalists oddly enough don't seem to have a problem with.

Incidently while visiting our friends on Kauai recently, Hydro was going for .45 cents a Klw... can you imagine? How does that compare with our mere .08 cents? The point being that heat or no heat they need the same operating budget. Anyway... looking forward to the future as always.

A Special Thankyou

Despite the recent court ruling which by rights should be more closely scrutinized, to all the Petitioners representative of a wide sampling of the community, once again, thank you for bringing this important issue of conflict of interest to the community's attention.

To the Islands Trust and 'Humphreys' too numerous to mention, thank you too, obviously this whole affair has had a constructive impact on policy with the recently released publication reminder for old and new Trustees - "How to Stay Out of Trouble". A detailed explanation of what conflict of interest is and isn't should now be amply clear enough even for future judges. It is surely recommended reading for any elected officials or society directors in general. Better late than never.

To all the secret or otherwise closed societies out there, I hope the next time you consider coming to the taxpayer-funded trough, that you do us all a favour and seek traditional public donations first to test the support validity of your cause and then most certainly recuse yourselves as directors from voting yourself funds if you are the ones in a conflict of interest situation. Again, refer to the Islands Trust publication above if you don't understand the subtler nuances of the legislation.

Paul Marcano
Vesuvius

Court Approved Non Declaration of Conflict to Interest?

With the first part of the court judgment clearing Garth Hendren of conflict of interest, I say fine but as I posted to the Driftwood article:

Yea, no, I don't buy it. These so called "bullies" were merely attempting to get legal clarity on whether elected officials can set up their own societies and then vote to fund them without declaring their special interest in them. Apparently that's legal now, who knew?

I guess it is open-season on taxpayers who have now been relegated to being a mere ATM of discretionary funds in the hands of our politcians who are now court approved to go forth and multiply their societies ad infinitum.

Thank you petitioners for your valiant efforts on taxpayers' behalf.
The keyword for today is *exasperated* but at least we know one politician who put his balls on the line for taxpayers!

Yes Minister and cozying up to Entropy

Politicians come and go, convenient fodder for the eyewash we like to call the democratic process but behind the scenes we have the ever-tenacious bureaucrat, planners and consultants with commissions and advisory committees who stay on from election to election. Often unionized there is a set rate of pay with benefits and expense accounts that are simply hardwired to the ever-increasing annual tax requisition with little that any politician can claim to control. Particularly if they are not leadership material.

In our coming election we would be wise to reconsider the commentary of those candidates who express a coziness to become part of this matrix in contrast to leading it. Compromise and concensus are all too often spouted as some kind of ultimate goal when in fact they are just as often the ultimate collusion with mediocre and ineffective solutions, maintaining the status quo and furthering redundancy of yet other levels of governance. We have seen countless examples of our Island Trustees funding redundacy of studies and issues quite outside their land-planning mandate. It is not in our interests as tax payers and it certainly is not in the interest of a community that yearns to grow and evolve towards a more prosperous future.

I would suggest that lack of leadership qualities are most easily assessed when you observe candidates who propose a too compromising concensus of community opinion on decisions that require far more professionalism and leadership. Someone with the audacity to challenge this corrupted notion that somehow the most agreeable decision is the best one when it may simply be more cozy eyewash for masking the entropy of the status quo. Community consultation is only one of many prerequisites to making an effectively sound decision on any given issue and if you are intimidated or cojoled by the process you are not a leader and may as well resign. The worst and most costly decisions are when you let staff overlook things like conflict of interest and opening up the bureaucratic flood-gates before a leader has done their homework.

We say 'we won't be fooled again' yet so many people vote the most 'establishment' candidates everytime! All I can say is look for candidates who really know the 'yes minister' cultural role they will be submerged in and assess whether you think they will understand the full depth of what it means to lead and ultimately rise above this cozy and expensive consensus that results in a community in entropy.

Sometimes you can't vote with your head or your heart but rather rely on your individual gut instincts. Therefore, for what it is worth, I will vote a well-known quantity in former CRD director Dietrich Luth for CRD, and for Islands Trust, most likely Grams while leaning towards Wyatt.

Salt Spring Extremism at its worst!

I would not have imagined when I started the POSSE blog that we as a community would actually need a POSSE! One that would go after issues that were more than ideological extremism.

This latest fiasco regarding our elected officals appearing to fund their own organizations without declaring their conflict of interest in being members of those same organizations is most egregious. It takes the debate out of the ideological and philosophical disagreements we may have into a terribly legal and ethical divergence. We have never really had to challenge or debate our elected officials on an ethical issue quite as blatantly as what appears to have transpired.

It is a painful community process for a lot of us who at least respected our differences without tending to question the trust we put in our elected representatives' legal and ethical positions or their moral character. We did afterall have a basic trust that our officials were working within legal paramters on our behalf, even if they were a little camera-shy.

Our fundamental trust may unfortunately have been broken with recent revelations. We can either confront the ramifications of not demanding the highest standards for our political representatives or we can take their position, and sweep it under the rug as just an innocent, good samaritan effort made to fund societies with legitimate and beneficial agendas.

I don't think we have the liberty of that kind of choice here. It is a very slippery slope to set any kind of precedent that would endorse such a blatant, conflict of interest modus operendi to prevail. It is just too fraught with all manner of possible consequences for abuse and gaming the system which is why the laws for politicians and organizations are there in the first place.

The problem with just looking at the good works of the Trustees' societies and disregarding the conflict of interest in their decision to self-fund them with tax dollars is that pet projects are often just that, pet projects. And in the case of something still controversial like a "Climate Action Council" one has to acknowledge that some of us simply reject the politically correct notion that the "debate is over" regarding who or what changes the climate on the planet Earth. Notwithstanding, the Federal and Provincial governments already fund 'climate change' research from our taxes which means the Trustees are yet again demonstrating their redundancy in budgeting funds for areas quite outside their land planning mandate.

The bottom line is 'good works' and claiming to have no idea the community had any objections to 'undeclared conflict of interest' voting procedures is more than naive, hardly appears innocent, and when it comes to spending our money, irresponsible to deny the accusation and force expensive legal action.

Any Trustee worthy of the name would have immediately apologised and acknowledged at least the perception of a conflict of interest. They should have rescinded the grants, possibly resigned from the Trust and/or the societies in question and then maybe had the societies re-apply for funding after they were out of office.

The events as depicted, taint both the Island Trust and the societies they helped to found.

Well what else could they possibly have said?

If ignorance of basic, common sense, conflict of interest law is in fact the excuse the Trustees and Mr. Hendren are falling back on (predictable actually) then it only tells the community just how deep the problem may be engrained in our broken governance model. Surely re-imbursement and a complete Trust-Wide review/audit should be the least the courts decide to do.

It is outrageously simplistic to say 'I did not know', when all three of our elected officials are clearly professionals and indeed should know the basics of conflict of interest rules regarding tax payers' money and their fiduciary responsiblities. It is difficult to imagine they are choosing to act so intellectually ignorant, like children caught with their hands in the cookie jar and it sounds like close to $50,000 worth of cookies too! Unbelievable!

It will surely be interesting to see who among the current crop of candidates come out in support of this kind of did-not-know-it-was-a conflict of interest. eeaaahhhtttt sorry, wrong answer Trustees and Hendren. Good luck with that one. Their little redirect that the community should have said something, well, how about declaring your conflict of interest up front and put the requests for funds on the agenda in advance so we could comment hmmmm? - the gall!

AND THEN to go further and say this is going to cost us to go to court to defend their ignorance? We can only hope that it will save us money in the long run by upholding the precident that this is NOT acceptable behaviour from our elected officials!

Thank you petitioners for bringing to the light of day this kind of blantant disregard for fundamental political principles of right and wrong. Clearly this demonstrates why the community has a right to have tax payer funded meetings videotaped. Once again thank you Jill Treewater for your perseverence in recording for posterity meetings few have time to attend.

Dismayed and concerned for Salt Spring's future. :(

This is not a Witch Hunt!

It may behove those crying 'witch hunt' to maybe re-read the 'facts' at www.islandstrust.org where former Trustee Eric Booth has done an exemplary and objective profile on this issue. But look, I have to agree with George Erhing's 1988 quote "The rules are the rules. You will follow them and we will honour you. Break them and you are dust we kick from our cleats. You get what you deserve".

Certainly true in cases where your actions affect other people (and their taxes) , problem is with those victimless crimes like drinking alcohol or smoking pot after a solid day's work, relax and float downstream and all that...

But recent events at LTC meetings where video evidence appears to show a propensity to allocate tax payers' funds to pet projects that the Trustees themselves are directors and beneficiaries of is quite another matter! And it is not about highways paved with golden intentions here, it is about the fundamental precident it sets for disregarding conflict of interest protocals and that is all that is being addressed in the court action being brought against our local politicians.

If they are convicted, I think George's 1988 view holds and both Trustees probably would have to accept the consequences of their actions and hopefully apologise, possibly resign immediately, all in good faith... and return the money of course. He and Christine can re-apply once they are out of office, the Trust is still going to be generous to its friends with our money. Conflict of Interest law is pretty straight forward and I am rather surprised our politicians chose to look the other way when it was staring them right in the face. Just saying.

It will be interesting to see who comes out to support this kind of disregard for conflict of interest and I agree with Mr. Buckwald it will happen under a municipal model as well... human nature is what it is.

I am just suggesting that a more centralized governance at least gives tax payers one roof under which to monitor fiduciary impropriety. Imagine the job of monitoring what we have now? It is all over the map and it is getting very expensive to manage as islanders. No witch hunt here... no need to hunt in fact, it is all happening in broad daylight.

The citizens launching this court action are to be commended for paying attention to our political process, the players, and how our tax dollars are spent. Most of us are way too busy in our daily jobs to have the energy to scutinize what goes on in meetings held at 1:00pm in the afternoon. We can certainly thank Jill Treewater for keeping at least a video record of these meetings, otherwise how would we have ever known or had the evidence of what is happening at these meetings?

Let's not forget how the Trustees so fervently tried to ban video taping at publicly funded meetings.

Flame burns Moths...

It would seem the flames of easily accessible taxpayer cash funneled by our politicians to various pet projects, set up by these self-same local politicians may have been too easy to resist.

It is actually not a bad little financial scheme, not quite a ponzy scheme but it certainly seems to work multiple times.

First, you start a pet project on a topical fad like Al Gore's 'climate change', you make informal application and motions at a Local Trust Committee yourself because you are not only the representive chair of the pet project but conveniently, the elected Trust representative too, then you say things like 'no problem we have done this before' and speak about the project in glowing third person terms... "they this and they that', don't post it as an agenda item to advise the public, wait for an LTC meeting that is almost devoid of an audience, (after making them the most boring events ever) then slam bam thank you taxpayer, you vote yourselves the cash with barely a discussion or sign of even an application with details as to deliverables.

It is all very nice, TRUSTEE <> CASH <> PET PROJECT <> ADVISORY REPORT <> TRUSTEE and then it all appears to loop back for another dip into the bottomless cash pot at our expense! Yes very nice indeed...NOT!!!

I am sure we can look forward to the double-speak explanations. Cries that this is some kind of witch hunt and various other redirects down the highway of 'good intentions'.

One wonders how the basics of their civic understanding of 'conflict of interest' emblazened in their own pet project rules (article 13) could have been stretched to rationalize such lack of fiduciary behaviour?

Not to mention that we have all wondered why the Islands Trust budget has been ballooning year after year after year to almost $7,000,000 million???? The Trust is a simple land-planning function for crying out loud, that's it, and it is commanding a municipal sized budget? (Check Trust Budget Clock top right)

Well if any of these allegations are true, heads should roll before the election this fall and they should roll rather quickly if the video evidence for all to see is as matter-of-fact as it looks, not to mention cheques cashed, recent 2011 dates of the formation of these pet projects and who knows how far this house of cards will fall!

Folks, Salt Spring has come of age, we really need to move towards a Municipal model of governance and centralize our services and tax expenditures. All of these little groups are going to be impossible to monitor and hold accountible for the tax money they absorb and now if true, some of them seem to in effect be simply giving cash to themselves!!

Unbelievable if true and certainly unconscionable!

They always say "follow the money trail", ideological differences aside, this latest news is just sad and embarrassing for our community political persona.

Like Moths to the Flame

There are a lot of ideas floating around out there about strategies for changing the composition of the Islands Trust with fresh and thoughtful new candidates this fall. I liked the TAG team's book idea that might be used to explain the Islands Trust in layman's terms to the general voting public. If you are part of the non-voting majority who are not 'into' politics, believe me, you would hardly know the role of the CRD, who your MLA is, your MP or what Trustee goes with which bureaucracy, so maybe at least an in-the-mailbox pamphlet of some kind might not be a bad idea.

The hierarchy of governance and the idea that Salt Spring is different and creative enough to come up with something unique is now seen as an almost impossible task without legislative changes at the Provincial level. Despite what former Bowen Island mayor Lisa Barret floated to us during our last incorporation study, the Province's ministers are pretty adament that if we want local change we have to work within the existing Trust/CRD structure.

So what is the best approach? Personally I think ALL ideas should remain on the table since we are now a multi-tasking society. We can accomplish in shorter order any number of things through the existing technological network and in that we are indeed unified.

As the panorama of blogs increase exponetially it is clear that self-expression and networking presents us with the challenging concept that 'disunity can be a force that unifies us', Expressing and sharing what we are thinking and feeling individually benefits an increasing community awareness that reflects on itself. This will result in change for the better simply due to a broader sampling and exposure to diverse opinions.

Afterall, Look at recent events on the island of Iceland!

Oddly enough our 'unified disunity' has inadvertently caused a rethink of important changes to the RAR bylaw 449. It has also observably changed the way our Trustees treat 'we' the rest of the community and exposed deficiencies in a Trust mandate that cannot represent all our needs and services requirements. Neverthless we should still make every attempt to elect candidates who will be onboard with a better balance of environmental, economic and social priorities.

In our particularly rural perspective, from the extreme notion that "you can just get offa ma property' to the more expensive thrust of recent court challenges, we have made it clear that we are not amused by what is happening to our property rights!

Across the spectrum of our intellectual understanding of what we think is needed in governance, sadly bureaucracies epitomize the eternal fight with 'city hall'. I still don't really buy that incorporation would change this dynamic or the cost but a broader mandate of representation is critical at this point.

So be careful all you moths who might choose to fly close to the flame of power, assimulation seems the better part of valour once you are in the driver's seat as an elected representative. The fickle public who thought you were so great to vote in, inevitably will turn and toss you out with barely a thank you. See Obama Optimism 101.

That said I wish to thank our local Trustees for their public service and wish them well in their retirement this fall. I am sure they did the best they could under the circumstances of our broken governance structure, a structure that as yet has no mandate to speak for the economic and social problems we face in the future. No matter who we vote in, we cannot give our Trust representatives powers they don't have, they already presume erroneously to expand their mandate. It's a mandate that needs legislative updating or we need to become a municipality.

Robots Should Pay Income Tax too!

Off topic... Perhaps it is time that robots paid Income Tax too... I mean, mechanization hardly adds anything to the community otherwise... would it not be fairer to ask robots to pay their fair share too? We are taxed when we work, why shouldn't mechanized robotics contribute too? This is an area where the economy absorbs a bunch of invisible dollars that are no longer circulating in the community, yet the work is still being done... products are still being created... profits are up.

It used to be that more people had day jobs, they left work, stopped off at the grocery store or picked up a new item of clothing or whatever... machines don't do that, they just keep busy producing the stuff we consume and yet why don't they pay an Income Tax on what they are 'earning'? Seems extremely unfair, especially since they would hardly care or notice.

The tax collected could be used to pay people for a lot of evolving new 21st Century jobs that have yet to be acknowledged or compensated for. Like uploading globally accessible data to the Internet, photos, videos, writings etc. ad infinitum. This is obviously the 'new work' so many people are doing and they are adding immensely to our cultural and societal enrichment. Now that the information and content is digital and forever, it has its own intrinsic long term value to all of us who love doing a Google search and benefit from the results.

I think it is time we recognized the time and energy people put into adding to this global database and I think we can fund it by creating an Income Tax for all the robots, all those mechanized entities that earn but don't contribute back to the community.

Afterall it was the promise of the future that we would only have to spend a few hours a day working and the rest of the time doing what we love to do. I say NOW is the time to look at innovative strategies for redefining what "work is" and compensating anyone who is adding something to our cultural enhancement. I certainly appreciate the vast wealth of data I have access to and I hope it grows. An income tax for Robots would provide the funds to eliminate this illusion we have that there is an unemployement problem when in fact people are still working... they are just not getting paid!

We need a new employer, perhaps a "Ministry of Content and Information Dissemination" (actually why not just rename Ministries of Social Services and Unemployement Benefits?). And we do not need further value judgements on the value content and of work whether it is home-making a family or uploading a video for all to enjoy. Work done that benefits others is work that should earn a wage, a minimum wage at least! Extraordinary effort should be rewarded more of course.

Great, yea, super, but...

So the Trustees did manage to pass Bylaw 448 without too much caffuffle, holding a public hearing timed as it was on a beautiful summer evening in August (luckily my car battery had died when I went to try and attend). I think the community can thank the few others who showed up to oppose aspects of this bylaw for coming out and ACTUALLY INFLUENCING our Trustees to change their tune a bit! Thanks Norbert and Drew especially for pleading our case, economic needs and desire to see the Trust work with us as opposed to agin us.

Notwithstanding their compromise, I still believe the Trustees are over-reaching their original land-use planning mandate once a permit to build is acquired. I do no accept nor regard any attempts they make to pass redundant noise bylaws, already covered by the CRD taxes we've paid, or more importantly, who and how many people may be employed in a home-based business. Just how many complaints have warranted the expense to us for this bylaw adventure into social engineering?

Since all my employees are 'virtual' I doubt it will ever affect me personally but I still hope the general public is not just accepting these over-reaching bylaws as anything more than additional, unchallenged, presumptive, Islands Trust policy notions. I think most of us can see that they have stretched themselves pretty thin here trying to make work for themselves and their planners as the Budget clock approaches 3 million tax dollars spent since March 11th...

Attacking businesses like Mr. Blaire Howard's is an unconscionable waste of our tax dollars. It is not Mr. Howard's role to be policing who signs up for his services. If the Trustees feel a property is being rented to vacationers illegally then they should have the responsibility to challenge the land-owner individually, not a business that is merely a liaisoning service and one that indirectly infuses our economy with much needed tourist dollars.

And speaking of extremism, why on earth is this case inconveniently being heard in North Vancouver? Is this the Islands Trust's strategy for keeping individual challenges to a minimum and expenses high for unfortunate individuals caught in their web of mistrust? If so I would say "Bring the Trust Home" so we can all witness their inappropriate spending of our tax dollars while attacking productive members of the community.

When are the Trustees going to stop trying to criminalize, contain and restrain the energy needed for healthy community growth? Would it be asking too much for them to stop imagining worse case scenarios and rather show the community a little Trust? This last bylaw compromise may have seemed like an olive branch but it really only re-inforces the notion that their mandate extends now to internal business operations, employees needed etc. One wonders during the harvest if 10 grape pickers would now be considered 'illegal'?

NEW CHAPTER: Hang em and Drown em? Geessh!

This week's Driftwood featured a disturbing accusation, albeit unsubstantiated, by our local Trustee Christine Torgrimson wherein she claims threats of hanging, drowning and being kicked off the island! This is certainly a matter I would hope she has advised the Police of, as they are serious charges against community members and we need to know who precisely is behind such threats... to anyone on this island.

However, Trustee Torgrimson's astute political instincts still seem sufficiently sharp enough to use these vague and unsubstantiated threats to further attempt to divide our community's voices of reason. She seems content with leveling yet more accusations of being ani-Trust and anti-American rather than actually hearing the serious concerns of the local citizenry.

It has been said that we did not reject the Trustee's bylaw 449 because we did not understand it, rather we rejected it because it was convoluted in its definitions and lacked a credible foundation of mapping. It was a blanket approach which did not clarify precisely which lands and fish needed protecting from development.

The Trustee's article goes on at great length to attempt to tie-in bylaw 449 in with a popouri of 'world problems', from the tragedy of 9/11 to attributing 'climate change' to the rainy days we tend to have here on the wetcoast. Unfortunately we are left with an evolving portrait of someone attempting a global perspective (or is that a Google perspective?) yet demonstrating a serious lack of local perception as to what is relevent to our actual community right here.

Too much information in a global information age needs a clear and objective mind and back when Ms. Torgrimson revealed she was worried about "industrial and commercial sprawl" when reviewing Mickey's Coffee Company's application, she was clearly hallucinating a distorted American perspective onto a small island business proposal which was the cleanest, greenest proposal to cross any Trustee's desk in years!

And speaking of this American perspective and her claims of outbursts from people about not being "born in Canada"; as an expatriot American myself, I appreciate and firmly believe that Canadians have a right to ensure that American or any other country's politics do not unduly run or influence local governance. We certainly saw what happened when the Trustees used American municipal pay-rate models to justify their own 100%+ pay-raises in their last budget!

And isn't it interesting how the very discord Trustee Torgrimson complains about is of her own making even within the body of her article? We've all seen how the Trustees, post-Artspring debacle, have continued a mission in the press to fuel disunity. They continue with negative accusations and generalizations about the majority of us who opposed bylaw 449. It has been called "divide and conquer" and we see now first hand how it works, subtle? NOT!

In my opinion the Trustee's July 20th, Driftwood article "Can the community find some common ground?" shows a classic portrait of an overly sensitive, guilt-ridden-sharing, almost evangelical environmentalist who has lost her perspective on local issues and feels threatened by a community that disagrees with her.

Extreme Trustee's hysteria over the problems of the whole planet are simply not what homeowners are paying taxes to support. This little multi-million dollar Trust land-planning committee that Christine and George have been elected to is merely about our local island land use. Any attempt to expand that mandate out to the infinitely eternal nature of the world's problems is a legally questionable waste of our tax dollars!

As much as Trustee Torgrimson's article was supposed to be a plea for finding common ground, it seemed off-the-wall, accusational, continued to demonize opposing opinions and then managed to lay a lather of worldly guilt and uncertainty onto a paradisical part of the world that is pretty removed from such conditions.

Ultimately 10,000 people on Salt Spring Island can do very little to change global climate (assuming we should be tinkering with the weather at all), and even IF we all went back to horse and buggies, how is that going to influence millions of people in New Delhi, New York City, LA or Hong Kong? or their local weather patterns for that matter?

The Trustees seriously compromise their fiduciary responsibility to islanders when they expound on questionable science and then try to design bylaws based on 'world cafes' of environmental opinion. These bylaws are locally binding and affect real people and property values and we certainly did not misunderstand that much about bylaw 449!

PS. No matter how much redirect we see, it is important to keep our eye on the local ball game, the Trust Budget has now spent something to the tune of approx. $2,501,081.82 since March 11th! We need to continue to question the appropriate spending of our tax dollars and any attempt to expand the Trust mandate beyond the original legislation.