Airport Fiasco

Was it ‘something in the water’ or just ‘climate change’ that affected the St. Catharines City Councillors at the July 23, 2012 council meeting decision regarding the vote to accept the much indebted Niagara District Airport presentation WITHOUT all pertinent details.

Transparency means no pictures allowed!

Mayor Brian McMullan defended the action based on the same action taking place at the city’s other commissions. Is the Mayor admitting that there could be other commissions failing to bring forward major decisions affecting the overburdened Taxpayer until the middle of summer? Is the mayor saying that other commissions also fail to present their details at budget time?  

Councillor Greg Washuta, also an airport commission board member, gave a lengthy sales pitch as to the value of the airport. But, is Councillor Washuta and Mayor McMullan saying that it is proper to force a vote predicated on the supposed need to act immediately to save a ‘DEAL’?

Councillor Peter Secord raised the most concern over the whole unusual and perplexing summer presentation. Secord vociferously objected to the whole fiasco with its obvious unconventional behaviour
Standard reporter Marlene Bergsma’s only comment was that only St. Andrew’s Councillor Matt Harris voted against the ‘deal’.

http://www.stcatharinesstandard.ca/2012/07/24/deal-would-put-airport-in-major-leagues

Did Standard reporter bother to inform her readers just what questions Councillor Harris put forward or his reasons for not voting for this proposition? Did this award winning standard reporter tell her readers why Councillor Peter Secord objected to the ‘deal’ or even what Councillor Secord had to say? No she did not! And furthermore she raised no question as to why the rest of the council voted for a ‘deal’ without fact, figures or even details. Bergsma has said nothing about this ‘deal’ coming forward months after the city’s budget and in the reduced summer council meetings of only one in July and one in August.

Bergsma did not write about the necessity for our City Council to vote in ignorance ‘with a gun to their heads’?

None of these items were spoken of at the Airport Commission’s last annual meeting. All we and the council had to go on was the assurances of Mayor McMullan and co-commissioner/councillor Washuta that everything was prim and proper. People count on Standard reporters for their information. In this case it could be said that the Standard newspaper has failed them.

In the end Standard reporter Bergsma was absolutely correct in the fact that the only Councillor to vote against this odious fiasco was St. Andrew’s Councillor Matt Harris.