Lantzville Mayor's New Pre-Election 'Communication' Tool?

So, Mayor Haime has taken the initiative and created a website (www.mayorhaime.ca), which he then spent about $400 to provide every Lantzville household with a mailer introducing and telling us why he felt it was needed. Imagine a politician who has a problem with a biased media - I thought it was only the 'great unwashed' that felt that way since the bias always seemed to work against us. Personally, I think it is a divisive tactic, potentially pitting him against the rest of Council and my advice to him would be to stop being so sensitive to criticism, take some of it to heart and to develop a thicker skin. He doesn't appear to have moved very far away from the days when he used to send his son around on his bicycle to selected homes in Lantzville with letters threatening legal action over what someone had said or written about him or his administration (kind of harkens all the way back to the days of then Regional Director, Bob Jepson, when he used to regularly threaten the Lantzville Log with similar consequences if they allowed anything negative about him to be published).

Also interesting to note that, as Mayor, he is given and has taken upon himself to be the arbiter of what the public is told about the people's business of Lantzville (see my other Blog piece, What Lantzville's Mayor Thinks of Your 'Need to Know' http://vigilantz.blogspot.com/2007/11/what-lantzvilles-mayor-thinks-of-your.html) and yet, he now feels that he needs his own website to ensure that the 'right' message is getting out there! He has even paid for an advertisement for his website in the September 2011 issue of the Lantzville Log where he claims to provide "accurate information on the issues in Lantzville". In my opinion, it is more than a little ironic that he, who controls the information levers for Lantzville Council and who has often benefited from the 'establishment' bias of the local media, now feels a need to see that "accurate information" makes it out into the public realm. You will remember that the District of Lantzville has had a website since we incorporated in 2003 (recently 'upgraded' at significant cost) and which is also supposed to "ensur(e) that the information you receive... is accurate and complete" - is the Mayor now implying that it is not up-to-the-task?! I am gratified, however, that he acknowledges the "need for alternative avenues for Lantzville residents to educate themselves", which is what this Blog has been providing for the past 6 years.

One of the features of the Mayor's website is the opportunity for residents (or anyone else, for that matter) to ask him a question to which he would presumably provide an answer within a reasonable time-frame (the Mayor of Lantzville can be a busy man!). In his mailer, he writes, "I have never hesitated in providing information, answering questions...". If one takes the time to peruse the questions which have already been left for 'hishonour' (sorry, I just can't bring myself to call him 'His Worship'), you might get the impression that he hasn't answered ALL the questions submitted or indeed actually answered some of the questions to which he provided a reply. You see, a reply is not necessarily an answer, especially when it comes from politicians.
On Aug. 9/11, some 5 weeks ago, I submitted the following question to Mayor Haime as a follow-up to the one I had submitted earlier and to which he supplied a long reply (under the 'Council and Community' section of his 'Colin's Answers to Questions'), but not an answer:

I am already well aware of the many reasons why Council might decide to go 'in-camera' and, if I weren't, I am sure I could have looked it up. So, you didn't answer my question - one would expect that you would have asked your well-paid Director of Corporate Communications for the number of times Council has invoked this provision in the past 3 years. I believe that 'standard practise' (and desired transparency) is to release motions flowing from these closed meetings as soon as a 'decision-point' has been reached - has Council really not made a single motion that can be shared with Lantzville residents as a result of those closed discussions?

It then occurred to me that I am probably not the only Lantzville resident to have been selectively ignored by 'hishonour'. So, if anyone else out there feels that they have likewise been given short shrift by the Mayor's new 'communication' tool, send me an email at vigilantz@hotmail.com with the contents of your question and I will post it here on my "Chutzpah' Blog (please tell me if its O.K. to use your name). Who knows, perhaps one of the other members of Council might even want to take a stab at providing an actual answer to my apparently controversial, vexing question!

Mainstream Media May Often Be Wrong But They're Tenacious!

I submitted the following 'Letter to the Editor' to the Harbour City Star because, when we are making decisions involving hundreds of thousands, if not millions of taxpayer dollars on infrastructure projects, it is important that we have access to factual information and not just so much talk to advance someone else's agenda. Notice that the Canwest/Global (now Postmedia) newspaper didn't like the very valid criticism of their past poor performance in this regard in the last paragraph and so deleted it from the letter that was actually published.

Dear Editor,
The unattributed piece, Sewers improved in Lantzville, The Star, Wed., April 30th, leaves a lot to be desired in terms of reporting. If it was provided by government, surely you have realized by now that even they (you know - "for the people, by the people") have their own agendas and their communications are specifically designed to further them.
For example, the "laying of a sewer pipe along the community's foreshore from its border with Nanaimo north to Oar Road" was only a part of the $3.6 million public expenditure, (one that was completed BEFORE the affected properties had even been asked to approve their 1/3 share) with the distribution of smaller collector pipes throughout an area of 208 (not 225 as reported) homes and businesses and a sewage lift station comprising the bulk of it.
Since it is the fields which normally fail in septic systems and the tanks remove about 40% of the Total Suspended Solids (TSS), 60% of the Biological Oxygen Demand (BOD) and 5-10% of the pathogens, it is irresponsible and just downright wrong to write that "(t)he problem of raw sewage leaking into open ditches from septic fields in Lantzville, where most residences are not hooked into the Regional District of Nanaimo sewer system [in fact, none were at the time] has alarmed residents for years". Not one piece of factual evidence has ever been provided to support that claim or level of concern.
It is uninformed and incorrect articles like yours which are the cause for alarm. Remember when your sister paper, the Nanaimo Daily News, ominously reported some 10 years ago that Lantzville was "literally a cesspool" and sewers were "criminally overdue"? One would have thought we'd all be dead by now!