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Wine tab on the rise

Unless you’re able to live on a desert island without access to television, Internet and newspapers, you’re probably just as concerned about the state of the world as I am.
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Unless you’re able to live on a desert island without access to television, Internet and newspapers, you’re probably just as concerned about the state of the world as I am.

I miss the time when we only had to worry about climate change, poverty and the location of crosswalks in Burns Lake (some of them make no sense).

Now we have Donald Trump in the picture and (well, that should give you enough reasons to stay awake at night) we’re all anxiously waiting to see what North Korea or the U.S. will end up doing to address their growing tensions (and I honestly worry that we are not far enough from Alaska to say that this doesn’t concern us).

But we certainly don’t need to go too far to find growing tensions. There’s plenty of it locally.

Lakes District News has been covering our seemingly conflict-driven council very closely. This week we wrote three more stories that involve our elected officials (is it me or are these stories becoming more frequent?).

Two of this week’s stories involve the recreation organizational review, which was released to the public after this newspaper filed a Freedom of Information Act request. Burns Lake Mayor Chris Beach says the review is still in “draft form” and contains “inaccuracies.”

According to the review, relations between recreation staff and elected officials have worsened over the years. The review also revealed some “hard feelings” around the village taking over the operation and maintenance of the Burns Lake Curling Rink after the Lakeside Multiplex was built.

In this week’s Lakes District News you’ll also see that council has changed the way the municipality responds to media requests, without providing any explanation on why this was done.

I can totally see why council would devote time to making such a decision (yes, I am being sarcastic). After all, we don’t have to worry about an impending annual allowable cut reduction, duties imposed by Trump on Canadian softwood lumber, or the fact that we have no funds to start the Eighth Avenue/Centre Street paving project.

In the past, unless Lakes District News had a question to mayor or council, our newspaper would communicate directly with the village’s chief administrative officer (CAO). This saves everyone a lot of time since the CAO is generally the most knowledgeable person when it comes to the municipality’s operations, and Burns Lake is lucky to have such an efficient CAO.

But now questions are directed to council, who would then probably ask the CAO for answers, who would then respond to council, who would then review the answers and respond back to our newspaper (before our weekly deadline, if we’re lucky).

Sounds confusing? That’s because it is.

Between our local changes and Trump’s administration, my monthly budget for red wine just keeps rising.


 


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