Dear Editor,
It was evident after the loud protest over the proposed garbage incinerator that members of the public wanted something better. The mayors instructed the warden to drop the project and stop talking about it.
Several elected municipal councillors, including me, sat on a waste management committee formed by the warden that turned out to be primarily for talking about incinerators. We asked to re-form the committee to focus initially on best practices in waste management at our transfer sites, and then work on the next steps towards our goal of serious waste reduction.
Committees should be democratic, fluid, creative, sometimes confrontational but open to at least hearing all ideas. They should be chaired by an impartial member who will allow discussions to flourish and develop.
Unfortunately, this was not allowed to happen. The new committee was chaired by an MRC employee with her own agenda, who generally blocked any discussion that did not align with her views. And it was overseen by the warden who still harbours visions of expensive incinerators to solve what we think is a more manageable problem.
Perhaps the most disappointing part of this whole episode was the total lack of respect paid to individual members of the committee by the warden. At one point, a committee member speaking on an agenda item was interrupted by the warden who said she was “sick of hearing from her.”
When the committee asked for official standing so it could report directly to the mayors and had started developing ideas of its own for consideration, it was arbitrarily shut down. When addressing the matter with the council of mayors, rather than proposing official status for the committee, as the committee had requested, the warden said the work of the committee was completed when, in fact, it had just started.
It makes one wonder whether the real issue was the warden feeling that she was losing control of the committee and her narrative on waste management.
Sadly, an opportunity wasted.
Rick Bradshaw, Municipal Councillor, Sheenboro
