Desjardins defends small municipalities
Times Colonist,
July 9, 2014
Re: “Battling a behemoth from within,” July 6.
As noted by Bill Cleverley, Esquimalt Mayor Barb Desjardins has successfully defended her municipality from the Capital Regional District “behemoth’s” attempt to put a regional sewage treatment plant on McLoughlin Point. Her feat revealed what University of Victoria professor Michael Prince describes as the “inherent structural defect” in having a regional government that is comprised of people who are “elected and who first and foremost owe their allegiance to their municipalities.”
What Cleverley overlooked was that Desjardins is also fulfilling her other allegiance to meeting the regional need for sewage treatment through her leadership in pursuing, under the CRD umbrella, a treatment proposal by the west-side municipalities. With only one vote each, the directors of smaller municipalities often have to be especially competent to meet their dual regional-municipal responsibility. Unlike the pro-Seaterra directors (a.k.a. the behemoth), they don’t have the power to declare their individual municipal interests be those of the region as a whole and then impose them via majority rule.
So for CRD directors used to being in the majority, such as Saanich Mayor Frank Leonard, it’s easy to overlook Desjardins’ two-fold accomplishment and attribute the lack of an approved site to a structural defect rather than, possibly, a competency deficiency by the pro-Seaterra directors.
John Farquharson
Victoria
© Copyright Times Colonist
Times Colonist,
July 9, 2014
Re: “Battling a behemoth from within,” July 6.
As noted by Bill Cleverley, Esquimalt Mayor Barb Desjardins has successfully defended her municipality from the Capital Regional District “behemoth’s” attempt to put a regional sewage treatment plant on McLoughlin Point. Her feat revealed what University of Victoria professor Michael Prince describes as the “inherent structural defect” in having a regional government that is comprised of people who are “elected and who first and foremost owe their allegiance to their municipalities.”
What Cleverley overlooked was that Desjardins is also fulfilling her other allegiance to meeting the regional need for sewage treatment through her leadership in pursuing, under the CRD umbrella, a treatment proposal by the west-side municipalities. With only one vote each, the directors of smaller municipalities often have to be especially competent to meet their dual regional-municipal responsibility. Unlike the pro-Seaterra directors (a.k.a. the behemoth), they don’t have the power to declare their individual municipal interests be those of the region as a whole and then impose them via majority rule.
So for CRD directors used to being in the majority, such as Saanich Mayor Frank Leonard, it’s easy to overlook Desjardins’ two-fold accomplishment and attribute the lack of an approved site to a structural defect rather than, possibly, a competency deficiency by the pro-Seaterra directors.
John Farquharson
Victoria
© Copyright Times Colonist
