Oak Bay’s website feature to help people understand is a neat idea but has flaws.
READ MORE: Interactive budget tool launches in Oak Bay
Does it total the myriad of “oh a few more dollars won’t hurt” fallacy? Are town poets and such in the website feature?
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Using self-selecting respondents it cannot be accurate as a survey, as it misses many demographics such as people working two jobs to make ends meet and take care of their children in the face of crime and taxes, they don’t have time for surveys.
Feedback can serve to reveal factors bureaucrats and politicians have not thought of.
For example, one pesky resident of Saanich pointed its engineering department to the heavy axle loads going across the Craigflower bridge over the Gorge waterway. No wonder bridge timbers were cracking, as trucks are far heavier today than eight decades earlier when the old bridge was built. Saanich bureaucrats and their consultants had overlooked that – but didn’t thank me for illuminating reality.
READ MORE: Aging infrastructure major concern for Oak Bay
But hey, even a one-time engineer couldn’t maintain infrastructure properly, according to the new mayor.
Keith Sketchley
Saanich
