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It‘s time to let the public in on city issues When it comes to inforâ€" mation, you are either inside the loop or outside the loop. When I was a city counâ€" cillor, I was inside the loop. 1 dealt with city business everyday, and 1 routinely received phone calls from residents who were outside the loop and needed inforâ€" mation. Now that I am no longer on council, 1 am outside the loop. 1 only find out what‘s going on by reading the newspapers, or maybe through a chance encounter with a current city councillor or employâ€" In other words, I am now an average citizen, and as an average citizen I am not happy with the amount of information I receive from my city. Quite a few things have happened since 1 lost my seat on city council, includâ€" ing all the talk about RIM Park and whether the pubâ€" lic is being kept informed. Why, for example, did the public apparently not know that a committee of citizens was formed to come up with ideas on how money for the park would be raised? Concern over Columbia just NIMBYism Once again the ugly ‘notâ€"inâ€"myâ€" backyard‘ beast escapes its penitenâ€" tiary of the mind in order to protest something that can benefit the entire community. Leslie Kocsis‘ crusade to prevent the Columbia Street widening is a sad, selfish act that is reasoned by pure ignorance. _ First he theorizes that the widenâ€" ing will inflict "tremendous irrecovâ€" erable environmental damage to You said it QUESTION HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT THE RIM PARK FINANCING FIASCO? This committee recom Looking Ee back, howevâ€" er, I cannot M re mem ber CONl city _ council ever telling the public the details of the fundraising plans. There are no doubt many other things the municipality should be telling its residents but isn‘t. mended to council that money could be raised through naming opportuâ€" nities, this is by selling the opportunity to have your name on a seat in the arena for so K.. many dollars, or even namâ€" ing the park if you _ would contribute $2 million. How should a city counâ€" cil communicate with the public? Council meetings are open to the public, but very few people attend unless they have specific business to discuss. The news media attend, to be sure, but they only communicate stories they are interested in, and even if reporters were interested in everything, they wouldâ€" Ib] |ERS this community." That it‘s an "appalling wholeâ€"scale destruction of the environment." Goodness! One would think the city would be storming in with flamethrowers, napalm, toxic herbicides and unruly, _ unemployed _ drunken Kitchener bar patrons to devastate the entire neighbourhood! My God, how will we ever replace those rare red maple trees and the 2.4 meters of patchy lawn? should be looked into for fraud and misrepresentâ€" ing the facts, and council should be looked into for lack of due diligence. The whole thing should be taken to court." "The lack of transâ€" parency is a concern. It hasn‘t been handled in an open way." "MFP and Clarica O THE CHRONICLI Jim St. Marie Sarah Keeler COMMENT The World Wide Web, if properly used, could provide considerable information to those who need it if the city _ posted E such things as JLILY the agendas of upcoming meetings and minutes of meetings that have already been held. But this is not currently being done by the City of Waterloo. Something that could be done is to fully make public, in open council, decisions that have been dealt with in caucus meetâ€" n‘t have the time or space to report it all. Some council meetings j are televised, | but they will ST i never _ draw MR more than a Ne handful _ of in viewers. Then there‘s at least a chance that the media could pick up on issues and report on them. No council with any sense would deliberately hide informaâ€" tion from the city‘s citizens. Which brings us back again to the ongoing saga Reality check please. It‘s a few metres of lawn, some trees and shrubs that will be going. In fact, the city has even pledged to replace the removed trees with a greater numâ€" ber than that which will be lost. Hardly monstrous and a heck of a lot better than what you see on Weber. Street East in Kitchener. Next Kocsis claims that traffic on the beleaguered street will no of RIM Park. It will be truly enlightâ€" ening to see exactly what transpires, and I would like to publicly thank the invesâ€" tigative reporters of The Record who have revealed the mess over financing the I have not always been kindly disposed towards The Record; I have often felt the paper‘s criticism of Waterloo was unjust and meanâ€"spirited. But I cannot condemn the paper for its negativity one day and say nothing when it performs a valuâ€" able public service the Regarding RIM Park, I have always maintained that the past and current councils have not involved the city in any illegal tax dealings. The last council thought it was agreeing to pay a cerâ€" tain rate of interest; if the rate has been altered we must certainly find out when and why. If _ something _ was wrong, the sooner it is corâ€" rected the better. And it is incumbent on the city administration to let the people know what is going on in a timely and honest fashion. "RIM Park is a wonâ€" derful idea, but if it means our taxes will be going up because of it, the city should definitely have done more research into the deal." "It was not too bright of council not to read the fine print. They should have done more homework and figured all of this out in the first place. " Continued on page 10 Amy Scholl lic outcry over pay increases recently granted to our Members P(:?Bifliamentandnowpmposedformnpmvindalmnbersis understandable in a climate in which nurses and other health care workers are begging for increases in the range of one to two per cent. Likewise, when both the minimum wage and welfare rates have been frozen in time since 1995. It‘s a little hard to sympathize with the arguments of those who, like Prime Minister Jean Chretien, argue that politicians are underpaid. For the record, 1 do happen to think that politicians are underpaid. Where I differ with the prime minister and the premier on this issue, however, is in the priority being given to address it With the exception of our underappreciated local school trustees, who now labour for a mere $5,000 stipend, I don‘t believe that many elected officials in Canada are in danger of missing their next meal. While 1 would like to see a society in which everyone is compenâ€" sated fairly, addressing the minimum wage should have a higher priâ€" orityd'ulminuea_singpolitidam'paypa*- â€" is ages (I‘ve previously suggested in this ~INTHC space â€" only half jokingly â€" that pay |IQIOIRSIUR increases be indexed to increases in the VIEW minimum wage). When advocates of the pay increases suggest that they are needed in order to attract the best and the brightest to run for electoral office, it causes one to ask why they don‘t apply the same logic to nurses or public servants. This goes to the heart of the other prinâ€" ud "*~ cipal objection that people have to the large pay increases recently passed or proâ€" posed: that politicians set their own pay. SCOTT Premier Harris‘ idea to have the province‘s Integrity Commissioner decide on the PIATKOWSKI increases looks good until you consider the fact that this person is appointed by the politicians. NDP leader Howard Hampton has complained that the Tories and Liberals are trying to fast track their choice for Integrity Commissioner (the position is currently filled by an interim appointee) in hopes that he will then rubber stamp the significant pay increase. It probably doesn‘t help that the pay increases have come at a time when MPs have been engaged in what appears to be a battle to see who could make the stupidest remark or look the most incompetent. Rahim Jaffer had a staff person impersonate him on a radio proâ€" gram. Tom Wappel denied help on a pension matter to someone who had not voted for him. Hedy Fry talked about fictitious cross burnings that were occurring in Prince George "as we speak". Local boy Andrew Telegdi compared Canadian procedures for stripping citizenship to those of the Nazis. Altogether, these questionable actions don‘t exactâ€" ly add up to a pay increase. The more important question is what politicians are doing when they are not putting their feet in their mouths. A national affairs panel discussing Telegdi‘s remarks asked an allâ€"important question: "Who the heck is Andrew Telegdi?" Unless a MP is a cabinet minister (or, in the case of Hedy Fry, even if they are) or on the opposition front benches, the only time we are likely to hear from them is when they embarrass themselves or their party. Even among the Canadian Alliance "dissidents," few people would have heard of anyone besides Chuck Strall before they decided to go after their hapless leader. There has to be a way to make individual representatives more sigâ€" nificant in our system of governing. Pierre Trudeau called backbench MPs "nobodies" while Chretien compared them to rows of identical statues that he saw while in China. Ontario premiers from Peterson to Rae to Harris have faced legitimate complaints that the unelected advisors in their offices are making decisions that should be made by the people that voters elected to make them. Committees, which used to have a real role in modifying and improving legislation, are finding their role greatly diminished in many jurisdictions. Some individual politicians do make a difference. It‘s more comâ€" mon to see such people at the local level, where government is generâ€" ally supposed to be more open and councillors have their home phone numbers listed. At Queen‘s Park, retiring MPP Frances Lankin has worked tirelessâ€" ly to make the regulation of patient restraints her signature issue (after seeing her mother tethered to a hospital bed for what appeared to be convenience alone). There are other similar examples at all levels of government but, for the most part, what our politicians need far more than more money is more power in the decisionâ€"making Our elected reps need more power than pay