This is an open letter to the Town of Didsbury’s mayor, council and the chief operating officer, Mr. Harold Northcott.
Firstly, I was at the Sept. 25 council meeting and I would like to say to all that attended, good for you. We need all of our community to get involved.
To the mayor and council, you really must speak up and speak clearly or change the acoustics in the room so we can hear you. I was ignored when I announced to you that I could not understand what you were saying. Then a few others said the same thing and you, mayor, said I will have to call this house to order. Then you asked someone to fix your microphone. Unfortunately that wasn’t the problem – it was the way you don’t enunciate your words. Some of you on the panel must speak louder and don’t put your mouth too close to the microphone, it just muffles your voices.
Being as you won’t speak to me, personally, I thought this open letter would address this issue to everyone who speaks in a public forum.
The chamber was packed with concerned citizens of Didsbury and there is a reason for this. It is because this is what happens when you ignore complaints and concerns of all our citizens of Didsbury. And when the speakers are before you, please don’t turn the microphone off because you don’t like what you are hearing. It is not good mayoral policy and procedures.
In the Gazette on Sept. 25 letters to the editor as well as an article by Mr. Dan Singleton (“Didsbury fire chief out,” p. 8) remarking on fire Chief Craig Martin not renewing his contract and resigning from his post as fire chief without giving any reasoning for this most crucial and sudden decision, was a shock to all of the residents.
My question is was the CAO as well as the mayor and council shocked, never mind the remaining few firefighters left to tend their duties with minimal if any direction?
This is certainly a big concern for everyone and now I understand that manager of protective services Deron Reimer has been appointed as interim fire chief. I am confident that even though his qualifications may not fall under that title, that at least there is someone there to give some kind of support to the remaining firefighters. However, this does cause a dilemma within the town’s fire protection plan should we need our first responders.
What a mess, having the majority of our firefighters quit because of safety issues, and this is due to not taking the firefighters' concern of safety and internal issues seriously when they presented it to the mayor and council.
Ignoring the issues of the town’s residents, business leaders, developers, etc., is not the way to run an efficient and safe community.
As stated by Laure Rivers in the Sept. 25 letter to the editor (“Fire department concerns,” p. 25), she writes in the last paragraph: “It is our responsibility to ask the questions because no one is going to offer the information freely, but we do need to know how severely the current issues are affecting this community.”
After many, many months dealing with my own concerns with the town, only to be ignored – I have had to call on two government bodies, the Justice department and now the Alberta Ombudsman, and next, if necessary, Municipal Affairs, at which time they are now fully involved with the action request I submitted.
So again I emphasize, if the mayor and council and the CAO (who I believe is a whole part of this mess) please listen, do your elective duty and take our complaints seriously when they are presented and not just say “it’s taken care of” and not do anything. I am still waiting for a response from you mayor, dated back in December 2017. Really not the way to run a community.
We hope over the next year(s), this improves and we, the victims of silence, are no longer the norm from the Town of Didsbury.
Laverne Guertin
Didsbury
