Column – Joe Morinville

joehead

Seems like this election campaign has been going on forever even though it hasn’t even really started yet. Nomination Day is Sept. 23 and that is when the candidates really become candidates. But that hasn’t stopped those looking to run talking to the papers and the people on the Facebook about what they will do if they are elected.

So far I’ve heard some good ideas and some ideas what makes me scratch my head and wonder where people’s priorities are. Here’s my platform of important stuff the candidates need to get on right away. Maybe I ought to throw my hat in the ring.

1/ We need more parks in Morinville and we need them all built at once because heaven help us if a parent should have to drive or walk their kid eight blocks to where there is another park already. And they all have to be exactly identical because no neighbourhood park should have a better swing or set of monkey bars than another one.

2/ I like photo radar and I don’t care if it is a cash cow or not. This town needs another teat to milk other than the poor homeowner paying taxes and rushing from point A to point B to make ends meet to raise a family. Maybe if the Town issued even more tickets the taxpayer wouldn’t have to go so fast. If everybody slowed down a bit nobody would get tickets and no one would have anything to complain about. Except taxes.

3/ But the thing I don’t like about photo radar is how it is done. I understand these people need to be where most speeders are, but we’ve got three Community Peace Officers now. Sure Highway 642 out by the pump house is in the community. But so is all those streets where the taxpayers live. They keep telling us that folks is speeding where their kids is biking and playing. Maybe we ought to put one or two of those Peace Officers on some kind of rotation to nail these lead foot drivers ripping up and down the street where our kids play. The photo radar guys sure as hell are nowhere to be seen in those places.

4/ While they are at it they ought to hand out a ticket or two to these boom boom stereo drivers. If I wanted to sit and listen to bass speakers that make my hearing aide go on the fritz, I’d put on leather pants and go watch a concert where the Oilers play. There’s no need for an entire neighbourhood’s dogs to start barking because some idiot wants to share his music with us at 60 kilometres and hour.

5/ We’ve heard talk from one candidate about taking over Cardiff and making it part of Morinville so we can become a city right away. At least that’s what the article said. I think we ought to take over Legal instead. But I don’t think we ought to go through government channels and that sort of thing. We’ve seen how that’s worked to get us an overpass. Instead I think we ought to enter into a bet with Legal based on the budget. The community that can reduce their budget the most while providing the same services or more wins and gets to absorb the other Town or chunks of it. It may be a stupid idea but it is the only carrot I can see to make politicians willingly work to offer the same or more for a little less. Business owners do it all the time when times get tough. Why not towns like Morinville.

6/ If Legal wins, that’s OK, too. We already got a good start on putting murals on everything here in Morinville now. Folks will feel right at home.

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1 Comment

  1. Morinville budgets to receive $1 million dollars from fines and penalties . A large part of that comes from photo radar. The photo radar operator receives part of the fine as well. The other issue is that photo radar is only effective on sunny days.
    With that much money floating around wouldn’t it make more sense to equip our peace officers with photo radar equipment and not have an outside contractor. That way we would be able to afford one more peace officer and have more control over where, when and by whom photo radar pictures are taken. Peace officers would also be able to do policing when the sun isn’t out and speeders may not feel so comfortable on rainy days.

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