Couple of Oopsies at WL City Hall

From the file of "Oops":

1) Election Bylaw Review

Section 39(1) of the Local Government Act (LGA) states that a local government must have its general election bylaw (if the local gov't chooses to make an amendment to its existing general election bylaw or adopt a new general election bylaw) in place 8 weeks before the start of the nomination period.  The date to have done this was August 8th.  When I inquired what the City was doing in regard to this - I received the following response from the City's Manager of Legislative Services/Chief Election Officer:

We did not require any changes to our election bylaw so that section does not apply. If Council was interested in making any changes then we’d have to do an amending bylaw before the deadline referred to in Sec 39 of the LGA.

Which raises a couple of questions:

1) Who is "we"?  At this point - I've assumed that she is referring to City Staff/Council
2) If Council was not informed, then why didn't Mayor Cook bring this up with the CAO to be brought forward as a discussion item as it was in June of 2008 with the Council of the day who then proceeded to adopt General Election Bylaw #2072, 2008 (same bylaw that will be used for the 2011 Civic Election).  How can individual Council members provide input, if they apparently don't know about the topic??

2) Media Comments by Alan Madrigga:

In releasing the 2nd Quarter Economic Indicators Report (see here)and in a "WTF!!" moment - Alan Madrigga (Manager of Economic Development) said the following:

“I THINK THINGS ARE LOOKING OKAY FOR NOW AND THAT’S A GOOD THING IN THIS DAY AND AGE OF GLOBAL FINANCIAL CRISIS AND SO ON. I THINK WILLIAMS LAKE IS DOING JUST FINE RIGHT NOW.”

Really - things are fine, huh?? - wanna explain that to the 100+ workers at Tolko - Lakeview Division who are off work for "at least" 1 week, due to bad weather in the bush to bring logs in.  It's sad to see WL City Hall (Mr. Madrigga likely speaks for majority of WL Council as well) have the "rose-coloured glasses" when it comes to the state of the local economy and shows how out of touch WL Council is with the general public who is looking forward to rendering its' judgement on whether or not people like (at this point) Mayor Cook and Councillors Tom Barr, Surinder Rathor, Laurie Walters, Sue Zacharias and Geoff Bourdon deserve re-election.  Methinks not but we all see on November 19th