You Can't Get There From Here

Francis Bula has done a nice job as usual of covering the current deliberations of Vancouver City Council.

How to hold the line on expenditures without cutting back on all services.

Yes, how?

Of course, this City Council like all councils before it and no doubt all that will follow, is taking exactly the wrong approach.

Here's what they are considering:

Close the Bloedel Observatory and the Petting Zoo.

Reduce Community Centre hours and Library hours.

Close Libraries.

Reduce street-cleaning.

No.

The truth is that Vancouver City Hall, like all other City Halls across the nation, around the world is a bloating inflated bureaucracy with dozens of frivolous unneeded departments and hundreds if not thousands of useless money-sucking jobs.

The social planning and arts divisions alone are charter members of the What Do You Folks Actually Do Club?

Did I just say that social planning and arts are either not important or not within the purview of a city's responsibilities?

No, I did not.

I am saying that these departments - and they are only two examples - are over-staffed and under worked and cannot in any measurable way justify the money spent.

The City would be wise to hold budgets.

But closing libraries and community centres and local treasures is not the answer.

House cleaning is.