TRANSPARENCY SUTTON STYLE –
NEW TOWN HALL
The all-new town Council was elected last November to oppose the deemed
unnecessary and wasteful 4 million dollar rebuild of Town hall. Six months ago that was the opinion of the
current mayor plus 3 former mayors, one of them taking responsibility for those
election promises by the “Alliance Sutton” team. They can now not plead lack of many decades-long
knowledge of building. Yet some do. Just 3 months later, our new Council, with
one honourable exception, voted 1/3 million dollar for architecture, and
engineering by Groupe SM. Those engineers were features in the Charbonneau
Commission for the stragagème of generating
a large problem, then getting a large grant from Québec and then becoming the
consultants of the case. Think Sutton.
There is NO debate that the current water and electric systems are legal
and functional, that there is no humidity in the basement or ground floor, or that
there is any fungus in the air capable of causing illness. This was said in a final report by “our”
microbiologists.
Recently, the mayor confirmed that there are no such problems. Why then
did he never get an estimate for their promised staggered work to GRADUALLY deal
with building needs. To justify the
expense, the mayor prefers to quote an estimate by the consultants of $m1.5 for
replacing 100% of the electrics and plumbing and much of the structure. Subsequently Groupe SM was sanctioned for their reporting that had included this
not detailed (or justified) high dollar figure.
The Council, Alliance Sutton, promised exemplary transparency and
respect [end quote]. There is THE
problem. The official sutton.ca website calendar
shows 1 council meeting, of June 2, yet does not list the other 4 “special
meetings” with agendas and that are supposed to be public. How is anyone to guess there were other
meetings with resolutions taken? Worse,
there was no notice to sign a register for a referendum about the project.
There was no mail-box flyer to all tax payers. A few citizens paid for a flyer (thank you) but
with 1 weekend and the Fête Nationale in between, it arrived the day before the register and that closed
before any of our 50% of weekenders could arrive from The City, had they known.
There were no 2 weeks of notice plus a
flyer, and nothing for the 27th on the website calendar apart from
the bicycle race. Nothing else.
Despite
the gross lack of information we were only 34% short of signatures triggering a
borrowing referendum. Moreover, likely
all signatures were from former Alliance
Why does
the Alliance
They
can now go ahead, legally, but only if they build an elaborate space for a few “community
groups” that, as per a $12,000 report, sometimes meet with at most 12 attendees, now served
elsewhere.
They
can now spend at least $m4 for a once unanimously deemed wasteful unnecessary
project while condemning the office employees to live for 1 or 2 years in mainly
window less yet to-be-built offices.
My
guess is that we would save at least $400,000 right now calling off the
project. That’s a lot of freshing-up of
town hall. “Change the rugs and paint the
walls” said one of our consultants about a typical office.
The person in charge of the website as per resolution 2014-01-058, and the
Directeur Général under which she works, should be severely reprimanded for not
posting 5 of 6 official Town events in June, objectively and regardless of politicians.
I am more than disappointed as a once enthusiastic “Alliance
Eddie Vos, M.Eng.
Glen Sutton
450 538 0465
