So in Part 1 of my discussion on the Town of Orangeville Council Meeting from Monday, December 15th, 2014, I spoke to you about my shock to parts of the meeting…(for those of you who haven’t checked out that post, find it here). I am doing a part 2 because there were other parts to this meeting that should be discussed.
Cell Phones in Council Chambers?
There was an interesting motion that was brought up by Councillor Wilson during this meeting regarding the use of cell phones by members of Town Council (as well as Orangeville Residents who sit on town appointed committees) during town meetings. Councillor Wilson’s motion asked that the use of phones during these meetings be restricted.
I’m sure you won’t be surprised to hear that this motion failed.
I have some opinions on this topic, but would also be interested to hear what you think.
First of all, I am again shocked that this is a motion that even has to be brought up…I would have hoped, that as elected members of council, that this would be common sense. My thought is that I am paying you my valuable tax dollars to do a job…that job is dealing with Orangeville issues. I hope you have enough courtesy and common sense to use your time in council meetings for doing that job….not texting or Facebooking or tweeting!!!!
I am going to reference the corporate world again here and let you know that along with a code of conduct, most companies also have some rules…most employee handbooks have a code of conduct, a dress code, and some basic guiding principles such as no cell phones on the sales floor. My staff, at every retailer that I have worked for have abided by these very basic guidelines for some time with little complaint or worry. And each and every one of those staff were perfectly happy to sign their employee handbook stating that they would abide by said rules as outlined by the company. They understand that customer service is their number one priority and that texting or tweeting while helping a customer is rude and that use of their cellphones while on company time is unacceptable. Yet, we have to put a motion forward to eliminate cellphone use during these council meetings that our tax dollars are paying for while these people are making decisions on how to spend millions of our dollars?!?! COMMON SENSE.
Now don’t get me wrong, I am not surprised that this motion failed. And I don’t disagree with the fact that this motion failed. But, I will go on record to state that I have high hopes that I won’t be seeing any council members on their cellphones when they should be paying attention to the town issues.
Pan-Am Games
Ok, so this is a piece that I wanted to discuss after the Town of Orangeville Council Meeting from Monday, December 8th…a motion was put forth….and passed that The Town of Orangeville will contribute up to $25,000 towards the “party” for the Pan-Am games torch coming through Orangeville. There was discussion that they may be eligible for some grants from the province and the county, but still, $25,000?? What kind of party could you throw for that kind of money?? In my humble opinion, it will be relatively difficult to hold the line on the 2015 operating budget when we are already adding funds like that…
Preliminary Budget
I won’t go too much into detail about the initial presentation of the budget for 2015…because most of my January will be spent enlightening you all on the budget meetings.
However, I will enlighten you on one key highlight – The Town proposed 3.33% tax increase (approx $26.93 per $100,000 of assessment) to account for the proposed 3.3% increase in operating budget
Merry Christmas!
I want to take a minute to thank everyone who has been reading and sharing and commenting. I appreciate every bit of support that each and every one of have given to me. At this time, I would love to wish each and every one of you a very Merry Christmas – may your holiday season be filled with love, laughter and be spent making new memories with your families! I will be back in 2015 ready to talk budgets!!