All posts by James W. Breckenridge

Municipal

City Manager Gary Guthrie cites “lack of expertise.”

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That certainly explains the mismanagement of Abbotsford by Abbotsford City Hall and I certainly believe him. I am speaking of city manager Gary Guthrie’s statement about Abbotsford City Hall lacking expertise. Of course in this case he was speaking specifically to the contact with MHPM Project Managers on Plan A. Then there was the lack of “expertise” that led to the Spectrum contract and then there is… and then there is … . A little lack here and a little lack there and before long you are totally lacking in expertise.

The proposed construction projects and day-to-day operations of the proposed Arena are fairly simple operations to manage in comparison to the management required to meet the City of Abbotsford’s operational and business needs. Rather clearly explains why Abbotsford is so badly run, does it not?

Abbotsford City Hall will undoubtedly have an excuse, after all serving special interests, ignoring citizens, bad financial management and making excuses are demonstrated areas of major expertise. It is truly unfortunate that there is no demand in other municipalities for these skills, especially excuse making, otherwise Abbotsford would have a source of revenue that would render the casino/revenue debate moot once and for all.

Let us ignore, as did Mr. Guthrie, the fact that project delivery on time and within budget would, for most cities, be specified in and part of the project construction contract as Mr. Beck promised during the slick Plan A sales campaign. After all the process that led to the hiring of MHPM was so badly managed and executed that 3 of 4 contractors could not understand what it was Abbotsford City Hall wanted done. Defining the requirements of this type of management contract is small potatoes really, easy, simple and straight forward in comparison to the complexity of setting out what you want built when you refuse to be bothered drawing up architectural and engineering plans to present to the bidders. Leaving me shuddering at the potential for disaster inherent in the lack of competence just demonstrated by Abbotsford City Hall in clearly setting out – in even this relatively simple matter – what is required from the bidder.

More directly on this question of expertise, I know of at least two people in Abbotsford who are capable of managing these construction projects, available on a contract basis for considerably less that $524,250, who would be devoting full time to the project management. The idea of time devoted to actually managing the projects is important because, as anyone familiar with these types of management contracts would tell you, there are not likely a great number of hours available within this contract to be spent on actual management.

Of course hiring somebody locally to oversee project construction or running the proposed Arena would leave witnesses of what actually took place in Abbotsford and available to tell the citizens of Abbotsford what went or is going wrong. I tip my hat to Abbotsford City Hall’s brilliant posterior covering insurance policy with MHPM Inc which ensures them someone out of town to blame for the debacle Plan A holds promise to become. Leaving witnesses safely hidden away in Ottawa or the USA.

As I said, the City would have a fantastic source of revenue if only there was a need or demand in other municipalities for this kind of cover-you-posterior activity. Instead we are left with the $524,250 cost of posterior insurance for Abbotsford City Hall. But then what is another paltry $524,250 added into the $97,000, 000+ nightmare that is Plan A? After all, it is only taxpayer’s money, a few additional percentage points on the old tax bill.

Consider

Do societies have a tipping point?

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The changeeverything.ca website had a poll on environmental change and tipping points which got me wondering if societies have a tipping point. Is there a point at which the imbalances within a society become so pronounced that a massive rebalancing with its attendant “natural disasters” is unavoidable?

At this point in considering this question I am not exactly sure what such a rebalancing would look like, but it would undoubtedly be chaotic with a frightening potential for violence.

In previous generations there was the promise and real opportunity of improving ones life, especially for your children. This current generation will be the first generation getting less from their parent’s generation than their parents received form the grandparent’s generation. Where once the future held the promise of the stars, for current and future generations it now promises only a shrinking world and increasing competition for evermore scarce and costly resources.

There are also the far-reaching economic, environmental and sociological effects of climate change being bequeathed to the future.

A fair and balance society would have the flexibility to deal with and adapt to the changing world, to the stresses and strains of a diminished and diminishing future. Unfortunately our society and social structure has become imbalanced as never before in our history as a nation. What is it that leads me to conclude our society is so out of balance that we, as a society, need be concern about redressing the balance before anarchy erupts in the form of class warfare?

The wealth of the nation has become concentrated in the hands of a small percentage of the population and that concentration continues to increase.

Upward mobility is fast becoming a concept of the past except for a lucky few who in effect “strike it rich”. Prior to this time hard work and effort held out the promise of an improved economic situation. In Vancouver today there is an entire group of workers who even though working full (or over) time cannot afford housing the city they work in. This is also holds true in Abbotsford where I am aware of those forced to live homeless by hard, cold economic reality. Their housing and other choices narrowed and complicated by the fact they are working full time.

Other working people find themselves being ground down into homelessness and poverty by groaning debt loads. Yes a portion of that debt burden is often the result of poor money management, but all to much of it stems from the onerous cost of housing.

Despite our pretence of being a classless society we are becoming a class society – an economic class society.

I. The privileged moneyed class whose power is a function of their control over the wealth of the nation.

II. The operating class, those whose education, skills and talents are needed for the operation of society and by the moneyed class.

III. The working class, the drones who perform the day-to-day labour required to run society. Kept in a kind of debt slavery but their large, sometimes overwhelming debt owed to the moneyed class.

IV. The throwawayclass. The boogeymen and women whose spectre is used to keep the workers in line. Increasingly these days the very real fear of falling into this class serves to drive and distract the working class drones.

Just a few decades ago the distribution of people from poorest to richest was more of a continuum: poorest ………………………………………….richest.

The above continuum held the inherent promise of an ability to move upwards (or downwards) along the continuum. During the past few decades this continuum, with its promise of moving up the continuum, has begun to break-up and form “economic planets” around points I – IV above. Like the planets of our solar system these “economic planets”, or classes, are separated by wide distances with their current orbital trajectories taking them further away from each other over time.

The old adage “The rich are getting richer and poor are getting poorer” has never been truer. Except that currently “the poor” has expanded to include the working class, not just those living in poverty. Even the most basic shelter has become so costly that our streets are being inhabited by people working full time, even overtime, but still unable to afford shelter.

The middle class as we knew it is an endangered species having all but disappeared. Along with this many are facing the disappearance of retirement, facing the need to continue working or face the real risk of a descent into poverty, homelessness and finding themselves joining the growing ranks of retirees depending on the Salvation Army and their local Food Bank for their daily bread.

We have become a society of economic classes with the differences between these economic classes growing. As the separation between the classes grows the economic fairness, indeed the fairness of our society itself is decreasing at a faster and faster pace becoming more pronounced and in your face day by day.

How much unfairness can our society contain before it begins to come apart at its seams, along the splits between the classes? At what point does society have lost so much cohesion that it begins to fly apart?

At a time when circumstances in the world are placing increased strain on Canadian society, when we need to pull together as a society and country as never before, we are becoming less of a society – indeed in many ways less Canadian.

These increasing internal and external stresses are beginning to tear at the fabric of our society, pulling us apart. If we sit around ignoring this reality because it is uncomfortable and unpleasant we will find our society has become uncivil to the point where a form of civil war between the classes inescapably breaks out.

A rebalancing of the economic class structure we have allowed to be born will be uncomfortable, especially dealing with wealth concentration where the wealth of Canada needs to be spread more fairly throughout all levels of Society. Will we achieve this rebalancing in a Canadian manner or wait until chaos erupts? How close are we to the societal tipping point? Have we passed the point where we can have any control over the rebalancing of economic and societal fairness? Is economic warfare between the classes now inevitable?

Caveat emptor

Hissy fit by Imagine Abboptsford cancels dialogue

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Ms. Hamilton’s statement about “weekly opportunities for dialogue” with city council show just how little awareness of Dialogue in Abbotsford she has. Discussion is permitted only when demanded by city statutes. Otherwise citizens are to be seen paying their taxes but not heard.

Which probably goes a long way to explain how she could consider cancelling a dialogue the way Imagine Abbotsford did would be considered to have allowed them to “… complete this first year of dialogues successfully”. Avoiding unpleasant topics does not seem to me to be successful dialogue.

Ms Hamilton’s statements would seem to suggest that councilor Dave Lowen is not a policy maker as he was present at the January dialogue, fully participated, was listened to and not attacked by the numerous opponents of Plan A participating in the dialogue that day.

Perhaps it is merely that Ms Hamilton considers only the Thought Leaders of Imagine Abbotsford to be capable of conveying the thoughts and concerns of the uncouth citizens to the policy makers in an appropriately gentile manner? Thus necessitating the cancellation of the meeting lest the peasants put in an appearance. It would also serve to explain why the results of the January dialogue would be made available to the “thought leaders” and “policy makers” before being shared with those who put forth the ideas.

Finally: I am aware that there was some concern expressed about Vince Dimanno’s call on the Abbotsford Monitor’s webpage for the public to get together at the Clearbrook Library. If this is what gave rise to the cancellation all I can do is shake my head at the poor judgment shown. Mr. Dimanno and the citizens he was speaking to and for live in the real world. Meaning, with the Library closing at 5PM on Fridays, people who have to actually work hard to pay their city property taxes would be unable to attend. Which is why, in order to be inclusive of every citizen including self proclaimed thought leaders and even policy makers it was rescheduled to Saturday at 2PM at Clearbrook Library

Municipal

When were the laws of logic repealed by Abbotsford City Hall?

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How was it that I missed this major change?

Just a quick question about how it is that Mr. Guthrie can say we need to employ a Project Manager because “(City) staff is unable to dedicate neither the required time not specialist skills…”; then state that they excepted the lowest bid, even when it was grossly out of line with the three other bids on the grounds that work would be carried out by the city?

If the accepted bid requires the city to dedicate time to project management, but as Mr.. Guthrie asserts “staff is unable to dedicate… the required time…” who is going to do the work – City Halls Fairy Godmother or will it just not get done leading to further disaster on the DISASTER that is Plan A.

Citizens had certainly better hope that Abbotsford City Hall suddenly develops the ability to define project requirements correctly, accurately and in great detail. If they are so bad at defining their needs that three out of four contractors could not understand what it was that Abbotsford City Hall wanted done on a small Plan A contract such as this, just how BIG a mess are they going to bring down on the heads and pocketbooks of the citizen taxpayers of Abbotsford with the remainder of Plan A?

Municipal

Here we go again – Rush, Rush, Rush.

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Does no one at Abbotsford City Hall understand the concept of careful consideration, thinking things through, acting with due deliberation and diligence? It would appear, based on reading the coverage in the local papers, that the question: is it rational, intelligent behaviour to go running around madly trying to get a bid for an ECHL team, a bid that should be a year or more in the making, done in a month?

Desperation is a very, very bad position to be bargaining from. And Abbotsford City Hall is well past desperate on this matter given the multimillion dollar mistake they made on Plan A already, in not having the common sense to secure provincial funds BEFORE taking it to the taxpayers. Now they face the looming possibility of the mirage of an ECHL team they sold the taxpayers as part of their snake-oil sales pitch, disappearing the way all mirages do when approached.

How many more dollars is Abbotsford City Hall’s desperation going to cost taxpayers? What is Abbotsford City Hall willing to pay to avoid being so clearly stuck with a white elephant of an arena? Given their demonstrated inability to admit misjudgement and accept responsibility for local taxpayers being stuck footing the entire bill for Plan A, one can only expect them to adopt an attitude of “cover our A**es”. I fear, based on their attitude and performance so far on Plan A, they will be willing to spend any amount of taxpayer’s money in order to hide from reality or acceptance of responsibility.

I have little doubt that with a willingness to throw any amount of money at this situation, you may well be able to find a black knight to ride to the rescue of Abbotsford City Hall and their white elephant. I say black knight because the bills for this team are likely to end up being paid by taxpayers.

Should Abbotsford City Hall find their black knight I think we can be sure of two things. The first is that Abbotsford City Hall will crank up the smoke machines and roll out the mirrors to once again sell a mirage to taxpayers. And two, that all the important financial arrangements and agreements that lead to a team in the city will be deemed sensitive and hidden from taxpayers as none of their business.

OK three things. The third being that should you decide you really want to know what was agreed to and pursue the truth trough “freedom of information legislation” the city will fight you, as they have and continue to do with those seeking full disclosure on the original finances for Plan A.

This behaviour has left taxpayers only one option in dealing with Abbotsford City Hall: caveat emptor – let the taxpayer beware.