Do we need municipal government?

do we need municipal government?

By Joe Ingino B.A. Psychology Editor/Publisher Central Newspapers ACCOMPLISHED WRITER/AUTHOR OF OVER 800,000 Published Columns in Canada and The United States You always hear... Democracy is failing society... Democracy is under siege. When in reality Democracy is the vehicle that allows the people to elect someone to office. Traditionally, the electorate selected candidates based on credentials and stature in the community. People they could trust to work in their best interest. This worked well for hundreds of years as long as it was a communal mentality. In today's modern society it still works fine as a vehicle for selecting representatives. The problem is the quality of representative is what has become questionable as most of those elected do not have life experience, the academic qualification and or intellect to be able to make the decisions that they are faced once in office. So what do we have. Wasted tax payers money. Little or no representation. Think about this. When was the last time you ran into your local or regional council member? Do you even know who they are? Then how is it they are representing you? Do you know the issues? Do you know what is happening in your community? If you answered ‘NO’, to any of the above. Then you proven my point. Modern day municipal government is a waste of money. We have no representation. Unfortunately, those elected may not even have the answers. As they depend on staff recommendations and peer opinion. Not on hard sound decision making based on common sense and rational thinking. Look at Oshawa. They spend millions of taxpayers dollars to erect a park next to a park. The ED BROADBENT park next to Lakeview. Is that sound, rational planning? Or wise expenditure on behalf of the taxpayers. This is one example. Now you can’t blame those elected? As they have clearly proven they have no clue what they are doing. It has become so bad... that most of the municipalities across Durham have shut down public access to the municipal offices. The public is so fed up that out of desperation they see municipal government as the enemy. Oshawa, a municipal fortress with three levels of security. Civic, police and a 2 million dollar para-military security firm that primarily protects the mayor and council members from taxpayers. Is this what we pay our taxes for? Don’t think so. But let’s not blame the incompetent we elected in office as they do not have the life experience and or intellect to deal with the general public. Once elected they employ a hit and miss approach towards matters. What we need is to vote based on credentials. Life experience. Imagine how much we the taxpayers would save with just a regional government. We need to get government back to the people and out of the hands of incompetents.