Tag: Wards

Barron writer does not understand nature of Saint John

Barron writer does not understand nature of Saint John

Today I picked up a copy of The Barron, UNB Saint John’s student-produced paper. I came across the article “Travelling around Saint John: what you need to know” by staff writer Simon Jack. It does not take long for one to realize the writer did not understand the history of Saint John or the Transit system. The first point so I can move on was the reason he did not find information on the “Night Owl” run was that it was cancelled in Spring 2008. Now to the areas of Saint John, to refer to drawing a random line to determine the limits of both Millidgeville and South End is vastly poor research. The boundary for Millidgeville dates back to the 1950’s era boundary of city limits. Basically, the official boundary is if a line was drawn from Somerset Street and Sandy Point Road westward to Pokiok Point that was the city limits pre-amalgamation in Saint John. To define the South End one has to go much further back in time, back to 1785 (the beginning.) The Royal Charter that created Saint John defined the 4 wards of the “South Central” peninsula was split into quarters at Duke and Sydney…

Saint Johners I thought you were smart!

I still think that most of you don’t have a brain in your head sometimes. But, we will see. Come the next election I hope that there will be enough good candidate running in every ward so that we don’t end up like Miramichi. Doesn’t anyone remember why in 1980 the ward 198 years of a ward system was brought to an end? Because the council was too focused on the day-2-day of the city rather than setting policy and advancing the city forward. We were doing that, this is going to be another nail in the coffin of Saint John. This is going to strip away the progress foreseen in the last 4 years. The next council is more likely than not going to pit one against the other for; who gets a rink, I want my sidewalks plowed. And attention is diverted away from the future and placed on the present.

And my vote has been cast…

I have just had my say, in the advance polls this afternoon. Hopefully at least 40% +1 will agree with me and turn down the ward system, as proposed by council. The idea of having 2 per-ward and have no power to regect someone if they are the only two runing is so undemocartic. In my opinion this will hurt the city and only benifits the easyness of entry for for people to run for council.

I’m against wards for Saint John

After hearing that Common Council is going to let us vote for or against wards I thought I would point out my views. The problem with wards is that you force people to elect people based on where they live as opposed to whether or not the person is any good for the job. In addition there is no course in the system to correct this error. Although it does allow for people to run and get elected that do not have broad support, but it also hinders the election of people that might be good people. And in some cases if there is no good people running in a riding the people in that riding would have to “make do” with one of those. We see it all the time in Provincial and Federal governments some ridings end up with weak people all the time that end up being backbenchers and you never hear from them till next time there is an election. Using Miramichi as an example here are the results from May 2004. MIRAMICHI (source gnb.ca) CANDIDATE CANDIDAT(E) SEX SEXE VOTES RECEIVED VOTES OBTENUS ELECTED ÉLU(E)S INCUMBENT SORTANT Mayor / Maire Gerry Cormier M 2558     John McKay M…