Need another reason why city council needs a clean sweep? Some of them don't even know what they're talking about, even certain committee chairpeople. Take Dundas councillor and chairman of the Audit and Administration committee Russ Powers for example. He tried to minimize the fact that the city will be paying out 800,000 dollars annually for furniture at City Hall over the next three years. And it gets better.
Before I start here, I just want to say that I am not criticizing Russ as a person. As a matter of fact, I knew his wife, Linda, who recently passed away. She was a great lady and I had many chats with her as a BNI member. The fact is that he is running for re-election and judging by his actions of late, he has a long way to go to earn another term. That is, if anybody in Dundas is paying attention.
As reported by Emma Reilly in the Spec's city hall blog, Hall Marks, another 1.1 million is being spent on Blackberry smartphones. Now those smartphones are worth about $500 a piece; at least I hope. By that token, that would amount to over 2000 of them being used by the city. Now keeping things in perspective, the city, just like a lot of other companies, are having a tough time keeping personal calls on these phones in check. Owning a Blackberry Curve myself, and coughing up close to $700 for it two and a half years ago, I know that the most expensive aspect of owning these phones are not really the personal calls. It's the roaming charges, long distance calling and not to mention data usage. What about installed applications? They cost money too.
Obviously there's a lot of taxpayers in the city in an uproar about this too! But first of all, let's come to an understanding that this is a problem being experienced by all companies. And of course, before we start condemning, let's ask ourselves a question. I am sure that a good deal of you are Christians, but do you remember the parable of the woman about to get stoned for adultery. Jesus demanded "let he who is without sin cast the first stone." So as he inquired, who among you can tell me beyond a shadow of a doubt that you never ever ever, after having a phone for at least a year, used it for personal calls? All of a sudden there are pots calling out kettles. Not a pretty sight. Indeed.
Now how embarrassing is it for the chairman of a committee with 100% access to information to make a statement that is immediately refuted? I can only think that either of two things are happening. Either he is minimizing the expenditure to avoid humiliation or he didn't read the report. And honestly, I don't know which infraction is worse. Either way he doesn't look very good. All of a sudden, somebody's becoming vulnerable on the election front.
About this furniture deal I am going to simply say that I hope that we are getting some decent bang for the buck. Before we start hyperventilating about the expenditures in furniture, let's understand that we need businesses here. To attract those businesses, we have to have a nice front door. City Hall is our front door and whether we like it or not, we need to create a good impression. We need look fresh and ready to do business. Besides, we need everything to look as shiny and new inside as well as outside. And most importantly, we need to look good so we can attract some big fish.
The last opportunity we blew was the Maple Leaf pork processing plant deal and that didn't end good. You almost have to wonder why we bother trying to get businesses here when there are so many people trying to turn away such opportunities. And it doesn't matter if such tinkering is being done in earnest or if there are anti-amalgamation groups sabotaging such opportunities. We really need to get our acts together otherwise amalgamated or not, nobody will ever want to deal with any of us.
So having established that we do need new furniture, but the real question here is why are we paying out 2.4 million dollars over three years for it? And why is a contract like this coming into place in an election year? What is the penalty if it turns out that this contract is one we never should have signed in the first place? It seems to me that Mr. Powers is being rather ingenuous that he will be re-elected and, for that reason, he has a lot of explaining to do.
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