Somewhere recently I read an article about David Bennett’s announcement that he has become a mayoralty candidate. The article gave superficial platitudes of a man that should have felt empowered by the number of votes he got in the last election but instead put everyone to sleep by not doing anything with that show of voter confidence.
And now we are being asked to like him for succinct comments in council and performing a list of service club-like duties, duties that many many residents of Sooke do every year as a matter of just being good citizens in Sooke.
He talks about jobs, tourism and economic development, but where has he been for the past three years? Has he been active with the Economic Development Commission, the Chamber of Commerce, the Sooke Region Tourism Association or the Sooke Community Development Association? No. Has he made any attempt to work towards reducing, or at the very least slowing the rising land taxes and very high cost of commercial development in Sooke, costs high enough to almost completely stop commercial development in Sooke unless the project is mega enough for the District of Sooke to give away the farm?
Has he made any attempt to stem the large number of in-camera council meetings, so the taxpayers might find out what is really going on? He wants to, if elected as mayor, create a collective business council to work in a co-operative manner for what is best for Sooke. Huh? What we don’t need is more talk and discussion and arguments between groups who ultimately want what is good for Sooke but need to get there in their own way, in otherwords, same thing we have been doing for years and accomplishing little.
I believe one of the definitions of insanity is doing things the same way over and over, expecting different results. We all know the questions and answers; what we need is someone to grab the reins and do it — do what is needed to move forward. If he had been paying attention for the past three years he would be talking about hitting the ground running, not forming more committees to investigate something to do something and talking to groups about working together with enough compromises to actually accomplish very little. He should know by now what each department in the district office has, or should have, for goals and directions for the good of Sooke’s growth and development, both social and economic. But he is talking about more committees, more seminars, more...
No thanks, we need some positive action, direction and commitment, led by someone who isn’t afraid of leading.
Robert Randall
Sooke