In her letter to the Sooke News Mirror on Nov. 2, Ellen Lewers says that our lavishly paid CAO, Evan Parliament, “has too much power in his hands.” Does this include his primary job which, I suppose, is to organize the district bureaucracy? This seems woefully disorganized — or it is?
This past summer the negligence of a couple of district employees caused a few thousand dollars worth of damage to some of my wife’s property. Well, accidents happen; and the supervisor told her she would be reimbursed within a couple of weeks, once the cheque was signed.
Now, over three months later, to our complete surprise, the reimbursement process ended up on the desks of the new bureaucrats who were unfamiliar with any details of the event and ordered my wife to submit the claim to our insurance company (who were in no way involved) for further processing. And it was suggested she might like to consult a lawyer. All this for a sum so modest it is worth less, no doubt, than the cost of one of Mr. Parliament’s junkets accompanying the mayor to distant places.
It would seem that Mr. Parliament has used his power to install the culture of big business to district operations. That is: stall as long as possible in the hopes the problem will go away and, if it doesn’t, bring in the battery of high-priced lawyers. Hence, of course, the outrageous legal fees incurred to as Mrs. Lewers put it, “deal with... local citizens.”
I suggest our CAO’s area of governance is something an incoming mayor and council should take a long, hard look at.
Dick Momsem
Sooke