Sunday, March 27, 2016

Citizens' Petition To Be Presented To Council Wednesday March 30

CLICK ABOVE TO ENLARGE
Curiously the Mayor seems to have adopted a position where he is deliberately privileging the "Property Council, the Chamber of Commerce, prominent private developers like Errol Stewart, TasTAFE and many other" (unnamed!) over and above ordinary ratepayers. 

After all these 'stakeholders' might be expected to – or even be expecting to – turn a dollar out the development phase of any large scale development project. Nothing inherently wrong with that except that it is a slanted and self-serving world view.


The Mayor in particular, via his dogged defence of the agreed 'land gift' to UTas, has put ordinary ratepayers' interests to one side. Is the Mayor actually invoking Matthew 12:1-11 were "Spiritual gifts were extraordinary powers bestowed in the first ages, to convince unbelievers, and to spread the [word]"?

If so, ordinary ratepayers, it appears, are being required bear the burden of funding ancillary infrastructure for the benefit of UTas – a non-contributor to the city's recurrent budget albeit that the institution is a significant benefactor in regard to Council services.

Indeed, it can be argued that Council is proactively discriminating against the greater part of the city's ratepayers in failing to consult with them in a meaningful way. It would appear that the risk in doing so, from Council's adopted perspective, would be to receive the kind of unwelcomed feedback embodied in the petition. It is an unavoidable and self-fulfilling prophesy!

Someone, somewhere, has said that the only real mistake is the one from which nothing is learnt. So if as they say, life is a process, not an end, mistakes are an inherent part of 'the process'. Thus mistakes are lost opportunities unless something is achieved via mistakes. Suffice to say unless the lessons learned are put into practice nothing at all can be achieved.

Here it seems that there is a 'Mexican stand off' in play and there a need for something that will break the nexus and perhaps its time to consider Proverbs 28:13: Whoever conceals his transgressions will not prosper, but he who confesses and forsakes them will obtain mercy.


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