Any regular patron or minimally observant staff member of ARC will tell you that January, with its large influx of New Year’s resolution exercisers, is the busiest of the winter months. They can also tell you that as January progresses the New Year’s resolution people fall away and the crowd thins back out.

So if you were scheduling maintenance that would close the men’s and women’s change rooms for three days each, forcing people to change in the family change rooms you would schedule this maintenance for … the first week of January if you are the City of Abbotsford.

In keeping with the effort to maximize inconvenience and hassle for patrons: rather than schedule the closure for Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday one week and the same three days the next week you would of course schedule the maintenance for six days in a row.

That way rather than closing only on the quietest days of the week you include Thursday (cheap swim), Friday (longer public swim) and Saturday (public swims and a pool rental with 2 – 3 dozen people wanting to change at the same time) allowing the city to annoy and torment as many patrons as possible.

Mayor George Peary says he wants to bring change to City Hall. I would suggest he make his #1 priority introducing Common Sense into city behaviour and decisions.

Obviously I missed something in our recent municipal election.

Although I am not sure how as I attended all the all-candidates meetings listening carefully to everything the candidates said and paid careful attention to the media to ensure awareness of the issues and ideas candidates were speaking of.

Yet somehow I managed to miss our recently elected and/or re-elected mayor and council members speaking of the need to hold council meetings only twice a month. Or was this a possibility our elected representatives felt the public didn’t need to know? Something to be added to the long and growing list of issues and costs that the public does not need to know anything about?

This 50% reduction was approved on December 15th at the last council meeting of 2008 – just before taking a month off. Apparently they felt the need to rest up before beginning their arduous new twice a month schedule.

For the sake of accuracy – with 52 weeks in a year a bi-weekly schedule would entail 26 meetings a year, not the 24 on council’s 2009 schedule. Council is neither meeting bi-weekly nor every other Monday but twice a month.

It is this lack of attention to detail and to reality which has the City burdened with massive debt and debt repayments and having the need to invest tens of millions of dollars in infrastructure at a time the city is facing declining revenues and with most taxpayers unable to afford any tax increases.

Abbotsford is facing harsh fiscal realities as a result of council’s past actions. Under this grim reality the economic slowdown would not seem an excuse to kick back, take it easy, meet less and twiddle ones thumbs but a call to action.

I had not realized that council had all its’ infrastructure projects in a state where they are ready to break ground the day after receiving funding.

The federal government is readying to apply economic stimulus through spending to invest in infrastructure. With stimulus the purpose of this spending it is the projects that are ready to break ground immediately, not in six months or a year or two, that will be receiving funding.

To benefit from this federal largess council must have infrastructure projects ready for an immediate ground breaking, not be sitting around waiting for money to fall into their laps – we all know, and are paying for, how well that worked with Plan A.

With the economy in the shape it is in, the attraction of business and development is not only highly competitive but is becoming more competitive all the time.

Council needs to spend time expediting matters that are tied up in City Hall’s bureaucracy. Such positive action would serve to counter Abbotsford’s reputation as a bureaucratic red-tape nightmare which moves with snail like speed and is the last place one wants to do business.

The city needs to be aggressively competing for business rather than sitting around watching business and revenue fall. Taxpayers can no longer afford to make up the difference between council’s budget revenue numbers and the real world revenue levels.

Of course in the real world the economic slowdown is reason to work twice as hard, not an excuse for a 50% reduction in efforts.

If council is finding it difficult to stir themselves in the face of the economic slowdown they could use the extra time available at council meetings to consult with the public as to the publics priorities, where to reduce expenditures to offset the reduced revenue, ideas on attracting business and revenue and ideas on ways to save money through expenditure reductions.

Not to forget homelessness, poverty, children going to bed hungry at night, a food bank facing the need for new premises to meet ever increasing demand while donations decline, a host of social problems made worse by economic realities real people have to face, etc.

Consult the public – as they should have consulted the public on cutting council meetings to twice a month during the recent election rather than waiting until safely elected (or re-elected) before springing this on the electorate.

As a suggestion from the public on cost reduction: since council ran on a platform that included weekly meetings, it is reasonable to divide their yearly salaries by 52 and pay this amount for each council session actually attended.

Unfortunately council is unlike the poor taxpayer who, upon deciding by/for themselves to only show up half the time, would quickly find themselves seeking other employment.

I cannot predict whether or not Abbotsford will get an AHL hockey franchise.

What I can predict is that if Abbotsford should get an AHL franchise all the financial dealings and contracts between Abbotsford City Council on behalf of the City of Abbotsford, the investors bringing the franchise to the city and the AHL will be buried deep in the bowels of City Hall and securely hidden from the people who will be footing the cost of the required yearly seven-figure subsidies – the beleaguered and impoverished Abbotsford taxpayer.

I can also predict council will have a multitude of excuses for why they will not or cannot release the information that would allow calculation of how many millions of dollars taxpayers will be required to pay to subsidize any AHL team in order to entice that AHL team to locate in Abbotsford.

AHL President David Andrews made it clear that any Abbotsford team will be responsible to fully subsidize teams increased travel costs to travel to Abbotsford for games. The expense of paying this cost will be in addition to the increased travel costs a team located in Abbotsford will face in travelling to away games.

Simple mathematics reveals that covering increased travel costs will require 1 – 2 million dollars a season. Where is that money going to come from? Where else but Abbotsford taxpayers?

There are numerous other costs and subsidies I can think of that could well end up coming out of Abbotsford taxpayer pockets in order to entice a hockey team to Abbotsford.

Which is why full disclosure on all the costs and contracts connected and/or associated with the new arena complex and its operations is required. While it may be publicly embarrassing to leave the new arena dark, it is likely the most economically and financially sound decision to make.

With the economy in the worsening shape it is, the besieged taxpayers of Abbotsford simply cannot afford to pour millions of dollars of operating subsidies into the arena every year on top of the millions paid out in debt and interest repayments for sole purpose of allowing council to save face.