Since council has thwarted any appeal from our community to reconsider their decision to fire our fire chief I wish to inform your readership by way of this letter to the editor.
Coldstream council and city hall appear to be hiding behind legalistic barricades and closed doors in an attempt to avoid giving the residents of Coldstream an explanation or justification for the “letting go” [Malerby] of our Fire Chief. They are muzzling our volunteer firemen, risking a mass resignation of our volunteer firemen [in protest, of their mistreatment] , thereby putting the residents of Coldstream at personal and property risk,thus forcing the taxpayers of Coldstream to pay for a whole new and very expensive professional fire department. If, as rumor has it, this whole disgraceful and unnecessary crises was generated because of a personal disagreement between the Fire Chief and Chief Administrator about some of the building details of the new fire halls, then the whole community is going to pay the price for administrative mismanagement at city hall. If city hall wanted to do some cost cutting they should have focused on the recent sewer and paving fiasco in front of the fire hall,as an example of costly overruns. Clearly city hall is out of control and also badly run.
It appears to me city councilors take their orders from the city administrator, who in effect is singlehandedly running the corporation of Coldstream. City council,our board of directors, are not exercising their responsibility to protect the shareholders[ratepayers] from corporate mismanagement. If I were forced to choice between either the fire chief or the chief administrator, I would keep the fire chief. No doubt the chief clerk, taking in a handsome salary of over $100,000 a year, has herself covered by a generous employment contract in case of summary dismissal but that certainly is not a perk applying to our dismissed Fire Chief ,who has put 25 years of service to the community. One can only conclude that city hall does not wish to have a volunteer fire department and have deliberately generated this crises so they can set up a professional fire department which is totally under their control.
Perhaps after the upcoming municipal elections the voters will fire the deadbeats in our present council and elect a stronger more responsible council, which, as their fire order of business, is to reinstate the current fire chief, increase the remuneration for our volunteer fire fighters and give the chief clerk and associated hangers on, their walking papers. In the final analysis it may pay the community to rid themselves of an bloated administration and its tyrannical chief bureaucrat. Think of the money we could save by the lowering our taxes. The last two councils will go down in Coldstream history as the ones which put the people of Coldstream under a huge burden of debt!
Please be advised that the opinions expressed in this column are my own and are in no way connected to views held by the Coldstream Ratepayers Association.
Peter Peto
Coldstream council and city hall appear to be hiding behind legalistic barricades and closed doors in an attempt to avoid giving the residents of Coldstream an explanation or justification for the “letting go” [Malerby] of our Fire Chief. They are muzzling our volunteer firemen, risking a mass resignation of our volunteer firemen [in protest, of their mistreatment] , thereby putting the residents of Coldstream at personal and property risk,thus forcing the taxpayers of Coldstream to pay for a whole new and very expensive professional fire department. If, as rumor has it, this whole disgraceful and unnecessary crises was generated because of a personal disagreement between the Fire Chief and Chief Administrator about some of the building details of the new fire halls, then the whole community is going to pay the price for administrative mismanagement at city hall. If city hall wanted to do some cost cutting they should have focused on the recent sewer and paving fiasco in front of the fire hall,as an example of costly overruns. Clearly city hall is out of control and also badly run.
It appears to me city councilors take their orders from the city administrator, who in effect is singlehandedly running the corporation of Coldstream. City council,our board of directors, are not exercising their responsibility to protect the shareholders[ratepayers] from corporate mismanagement. If I were forced to choice between either the fire chief or the chief administrator, I would keep the fire chief. No doubt the chief clerk, taking in a handsome salary of over $100,000 a year, has herself covered by a generous employment contract in case of summary dismissal but that certainly is not a perk applying to our dismissed Fire Chief ,who has put 25 years of service to the community. One can only conclude that city hall does not wish to have a volunteer fire department and have deliberately generated this crises so they can set up a professional fire department which is totally under their control.
Perhaps after the upcoming municipal elections the voters will fire the deadbeats in our present council and elect a stronger more responsible council, which, as their fire order of business, is to reinstate the current fire chief, increase the remuneration for our volunteer fire fighters and give the chief clerk and associated hangers on, their walking papers. In the final analysis it may pay the community to rid themselves of an bloated administration and its tyrannical chief bureaucrat. Think of the money we could save by the lowering our taxes. The last two councils will go down in Coldstream history as the ones which put the people of Coldstream under a huge burden of debt!
Please be advised that the opinions expressed in this column are my own and are in no way connected to views held by the Coldstream Ratepayers Association.
Peter Peto
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