City of WL refusing comment on Rural Fire Protection Fracas

In today's Williams Lake Tribune - Williams Lake Mayor Kerry Cook confirms that Council will not be providing any comment, at this time, as to why Williams Lake Council revoked its' first offer of a 5 year, roughly $500,000 contract to provide fire services to residents' in portions of Cariboo RD Areas D, E,F that reside on the fringe boundaries of Williams Lake.  The same 5 year contract that rural residents voted on Nov 24th to endorse almost unanimously

This, despite Mayor Cook's insistence that communicating out is very important on this topic and everyone has the correct informatin.  Not sure how that works when the general public, to date, hears only the Cariboo Regional District's side and not the City's, as of this writing

Read the article below:

WL Tribune on City of WL refusal to comment on CRD Rural Fire Protection fracas

Meanwhile - Welcome to Williams Lake reports on this topic including the Cariboo Regional District's move to form a Committee (members' unknown) to deal with this matter to which Mayor Cook is excluded to prevent the possibility of a Conflict of Interest on this situation at the Cariboo RD Board of Directors' table

Read the article here

For myself - I really fail to understand/comprehend why Mayor Cook and Council is refusing to say their side of the story.  If they think that their move is legitimate, fair and legal - it only makes common sense to come out and tell rural residents why the City made the move (5 year contract to 1 year contract)  they did.

Otherwise - it is perfectly understandable that rural residents' would then feel that the City of Williams Lake is up to dirty tricks

Whatever tactic the City is attempting to employ here -- it is clearly the wrong one and it is my view that the City will get burned by it, at the end of the day.  It should be noted that residents' in the rural fringe areas, could potentially, move their shopping power elsewhere and they could affect the City more than the money the City would lose under the 5 year agreement.  This is how mad residents in the rural fringe area are at the City from people I've talked to or read their passionate comments online...

SBF