So one day the mayor, city council and city staff woke up and realized that there were roads in Abbotsford and, Gasp!, these roads need maintenance?

Was council and staff’s apparent sudden awareness that Abbotsford has roads needing maintenance so unsettling and bewildering that they had to hire EBA Consulting to tell them that a) Abbotsford’s roads were in terrible condition and b) Abbotsford needed to spend more money on maintenance?

Was hiring a consulting firm to tell them what any citizen who drives in Abbotsford could have told them just council squandering taxpayer’s money, that is to say business as usual for council?

Or was hiring EBA Consulting an attempt to cover up council and staff’s culpability for the sad and dangerous state of Abbotsford’s roads: “It’s so easy for councils to get into postponing roads as a way to balance budgets” he (Mayor Peary) said; and to help sell the gas tax so that council can bamboozle and victimize citizens once more by covering up the true state of affairs in Abbotsford to protect their jobs: “There would be outrage and all of us (at city hall) would soon be seeking other daytime jobs,’ predicted the mayor. “Nine percent isn’t going to fly.”?

And just how much did the city pay to be enlightened to the fact that the roads in Abbotsford need more maintenance?

Just as an aside: if 1% = $860,000 then $5,000,000 ≈ 6% and $6,000,000 ≈ 7%, not 5%. But then what is a few hundred thousand dollars here or there to council?

The citizens of Abbotsford were assured by city council and staff, when asked about the city’s infrastructure such as roads, water, and waste treatment during the Plan A debate, that council and staff were on top of the infrastructure needs of Abbotsford and that everything was fine with the city’s infrastructure – then and into the future.

Further city council and staff assured citizens as part of the Plan A debate, that Abbotsford’s finances were in excellent shape; that Abbotsford could afford to spend the large sums of money involved on vanity projects without putting at risk the city’s infrastructure needs or the financial health of the city and taxpayers.

These assurances were reiterated during the November 2009 civic election.

Unfolding events since the election have revealed just how lacking in accuracy, reality and veracity such claims, statements and promises were.

If we need to find extra funds for road maintenance I suggest we start with the salaries of the mayor, city council and city staff since they are clearly not earning what they are paid. Indeed given what we are learning about the state of the city’s affairs they owe taxpayers a large reimbursement.

Might I suggest we also put an end to the wallet fattening exercise of paying an honorarium to councillors for every committee they sit on or chair? Perhaps if councillors were not so busy running from committee to committee, in order to maximize the amount of monies going into their pockets, they would have been a little more focused on taking care of the City of Abbotsford’s business.

Realistically it is no surprise that those responsible for this mess are hanging onto their jobs rather than acting with honour and integrity and resigning.

Given what they have wrought in Abbotsford and the financial burdens inflicted on the taxpayers of Abbotsford they are highly unlikely to find anyone foolish enough to hire and overpay them as events have exposed they are grossly overpaid by the City of Abbotsford.