Thursday, June 24, 2010

Mayor Cook and the City's 2009 Annual Report

This morning, during Mayor Cook's Town Hall radio program with Dale Taylor, she made mention that the Annual Report was electronically available on the City's website last Friday (June 18th) and for that, she is half-right.

It was available but one would have to dig around the myriad of the website to find it. It should have been placed on the main page of the City's website. In my mind, it was not easily available for members of the public to find. In addition, no paper copies were made available at the same time.

Paper copies should be now available for public review with a Special Council Meeting scheduled at 5:00pm on Wednesday, June 30th for adoption of the City's 2009 Annual Report

Again (and I blogged on this yesterday), Council has no real reason to claim that the requirements to make the Annual Report available for 14 days was "overlooked". The same process was used in 2009 for the City's 2008 Annual Report so they (Williams Lake City Council) should know what to do.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

So in fact, she was not "half-right", as being "half-right" would indicate that the document was not available. How is it the mayors fault that the web page is somewhat confusing? I think this would be more of a staff function than a politicians?

Steve Forseth said...

Thanks for your comment...

I was attempting to say that the 2009 Annual Report was electronically available on June 18th but it was not in a place on the City's website where a member of the public can easily access it, in addition to making paper copies available at the same time.

As for your comment "I think that this is a staff function than the politicians" - there is the understanding that when Council is required to do a certain act by the Province, if Staff hasn't done it by the appropriate time, I don't think it is unreasonable for the politicians to ensure that the City is compliant with the appropriate provincial legislation. When errors occur, I expect that City Council will take the blame for it and promise to do better and not use City Staff as "sacrificial lambs"