By Staff
October 22, 2018
BURLINGTON, ON
A Gazette reader sent us a letter he received from that was published in the Meaford Independent last week, which he thought deserved repeating.
Burlington is not Meaford but as you read the piece you may find yourself thinking – that place is just like Burlington.
Home for all of us.
Congratulations and thank you to the citizens of our community who put their names forward to serve as municipal politicians. As tax-paying citizens, we expect our democratically elected officials to represent our interests and dig deep for the personal courage and commitment to move our community ahead to where we agree it needs to go. Building a genuine, efficiently managed community is a significant public responsibility and not an easy task with the ever-changing nature of societal and economic needs.
I am listening to the discussions and comments of candidates competing for positions as elected representatives of our community and I admit that I am concerned. No one would argue with the importance of ensuring our roads and bridges are safe, now and into the future, but there are other things that are important too. We want our elected representatives to talk to us, the citizens of this community, about the quality of life we seek to have for the future. I believe our government officials and staff need to work together with their citizens to clearly define what we want our town to look like, and once defined, determine how we get there.
It concerns me greatly when I hear comments like “give the developers and contractors whatever they want to encourage them to build new housing in our community.” Of course, we need to attract new families to live, work and go to school in Meaford, but we don’t want to meet this goal at the detriment of citizens enjoying what this community already offers. It is the challenge before us to agree upon and implement a balance in the use of resources to create the quality of community life that we seek.
What worries me are some of the comments I’m hearing about things like [community projects] being in jeopardy, or not being able to afford [services]. This is rubbish! People can afford what they want to afford and there are all kinds of levels of affordability. We would like our elected officials to implement plans to keep and build upon the services that our citizens value. It is also important that we have a clear vision of our priorities … now and for the future …. and that we communicate these clearly to those who represent us.
It is a huge expectation we have of our elected officials to come together and agree upon this community’s priorities and commit 100% to work together and with other governments to implement plans to make our priorities happen. There will never be enough money to do all the things that we want to do to enhance the quality of our community life, so we must be abundantly clear about our goals.
So, we have a lot of work to do. We are about to confirm our selection of municipal government leadership going forward for the next four years. In my personal view, perhaps now is a perfect time to re-state the service and planning priorities the citizens of this community value, and clearly define our future mission and goals.
As you go about casting your vote today – understand what the issues are – and make a choice based on what you know.
Tomorrow morning we will know who is going to lead the city through some of the difficult days ahead.
Due to inserting a picture into the text, the first line of my friend’s letter is hard to read. It said “Congratulations and thank you to the citizens of our community who put their names forward to serve as municipal politicians….”.