Babel-on-the-Bay knows that our readers are not very interested in parochial items about our modest little city here on the shores of Kempenfelt Bay. We are only telling you this tale as fair warning. The jewel of Babel has always been our beautiful beaches and the joys of bikini watching on hot summer days. It is with heavy heart therefore that we advise you that after next year, when visiting Babel in the summer, you would be well advised to bring a gas mask with you should there not be an adequate off-lake breeze.
The backward burghers of Babel have ordained that there will only be every second week garbage collection starting in 2015. Desperate Babel citizens will be turning to any available dumpster, public waste receptacle or convenient ditch to rid themselves of their more odorous refuse in the weeks between collections. It will do little for Babel’s reputation as a summer playground.
But that does not seem to be the concern of Babel’s backward burghers on city council. These people only seem to do what city staffers tell them to do in any event. And city staffers are completely uninterested in the ideas and suggestions of Babel citizens.
Just try to provide these people with some good ideas. Last time we were at a city council meeting, we were showing them how they could earn more money from waste and help the environment. They were not interested.
We suggested that they could at least support the use of garburators in condos because they were not collecting green bins from these taxpayers. They wanted to keep the extra money, thank you. They had absolutely no interest in how garburators can enrich the methane production from sewage and add to the heat and power generation capability of the sewage treatment plant. Instead they choose to remain ignorant of the potential revenues and continue to burn off excess methane while heating the water of Lake Simcoe to the detriment of the lake environment and the fishing.
Babel could be a really fine town if it were not for the blundering burghers that get elected to city council and the ultra-conservative municipal staff that does things their way. Did you know that they still pay to truck the contents of the city’s green bins more than 100 kilometres from town to get rid of it—one of the best sources of renewable, clean burning energy?
And they have already proved that they consider condo dwellers as silent simpletons who willingly pay exorbitant taxes and are willing to receive little consideration in return. Maybe next year, during the municipal election, someone is going to realize the potential of those condo votes!
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Copyright 2013 © Peter Lowry
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