SIR: This is in response to the recent article in The Chatham Voice regarding councillors Bondy and Vercouteren having to file Freedom of Information requests in order to obtain taxpayer-owned information. They are correct and represent responsible action as legislated, and as every council member should have done. Personally, I filed six FOI requests and am continuing in order to access public records, owned by the taxpayer, that should be reasonably available and because financial details seem to be consistently withheld from taxpayers and council.
Pat Belanger of the Police Services Board, and other board members, publicly state information has always been provided to council. I can unequivocally prove otherwise.
Mayor Hope and Coun. Stirling sit on the Police Services Board. I have corresponded with both and both have failed to provide financial details.
Each budget session, during the last two mayoral terms, I believe councillors Vercouteren Bondy, Brown, Pinsonneault, Robertson, Sulman, and Wesley have requested but were unable to obtain police financial details.
To the matter of Coun. Bondy’s request for financial details of the Bradley Centre, the mayor and administration had ample professional guidance not to proceed with this costly project; we are much too small of a market and tax base to support the high annual operations cost of such a facility. We can’t even pay on the $12 million principle, let alone the annual costs ($1.4M) to this and other capital projects.
I also requested a detailed financial report of the Bradley Centre and received an anemic and severely incomplete set of figures that demonstrated little, if anything, only later to be met with a request by the municipality to surrender $1,000 if I want further information on the Bradley Centre. This should tell taxpayers of the lack of financial records being kept to a number of municipal projects – the Bradley Centre, Kingston Park, Capitol Theatre, industrial park, service review and recently proposed municipal hall upgrade.
As our tax base declines, we are spending more. Guess what that means to your taxes, folks?
John Cryderman
Chatham
