Local readers of Babel-on-the-Bay have asked occasionally why we do not discuss city politics in Barrie. The honest answer is that city politics in Barrie is boring and is something of a closed shop. Anyone who gets elected because they want to rock the boat is soon subsumed by the system. Trying to shake the cage from the outside is also a formidable task.
There are three classes of people in this city who wear suits and ties to work. They are lawyers, politicians and undertakers. And this is their town. They will all get a piece of you one way or another. And their aides and acolytes are the civil servants who run things their way anyway.
If you take these civil servants a good idea, they smile, they make nice and they do nothing. Nobody has every told them should pay attention to the taxpayers who pay the taxes that pay their salaries.
One of the best ideas put to these uncivil people over the years was the idea of a large wind turbine on the north edge of the valley where the city dump is growing. It would have been a spectacular statement for the city and viewed by millions every year on Highway 400. It took more than six years of pressing for the ruling to be made that the wind turbine would interfere with the purpose of the dump. No discussion was invited as to how this might be.
And it is not that people have not tried to shake things up by suing the city. Why do you think we have so many lawyers? That lovely train station that was so painstakingly and expensively restored down by the bay in the Allandale area still sits empty and going mouldy as disappointed developers take out their angst on the city.
Maybe that is why we are holding off on the suit we were contemplating launching. The delay is whether the suit will be personal or class action. It really should be on behalf of all the senior citizens in the city. Well, at least those who like hockey. We have this excellent Ontario Hockey League team called the Barrie Colts who play in the Barrie Molson Centre.
But seniors and the disabled are putting life and limb in jeopardy in that facility. There are no safety rails on those steep aisles to the seats. Seniors without sturdy grandchildren to help them to and from their seats are in danger of serious injury. Their attendance at Colts games is discouraged.
And this is not to mention the problem of adequate washrooms. The damn place must have been designed by 20 year-olds with 16 year-old bladders. They should stop selling Molson in places without adequate places to pee.
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Copyright 2015 © Peter Lowry
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