Overtures in vain

Dear Mr. Editor:
We just witnessed another severe injustice on the taxpayers of Fort Frances, dealing with the succession bylaw, by our members of town council.
The strong message served on council, by taxpayers voting for Mr. Perry, fell on deaf ears. Your protest vote shows that you—Mr. and Mrs. Taxpayer—mean absolutely squat to this council.
To further complicate this matter, the members who made the presentation for a succession bylaw were denied rights to speak to Clerk Glenn Treftlin’s report given council to vote on.
To make matters worse, the presenters (Mr. Allan T. Bedard, Larry Wood, and myself), attended committee meetings where this matter was referred to by council, invited by council to attend, then deferred back to council, without allowing the presenters any opportunity to discuss this matter in open council before the public.
In review, we (Mr. Bedard and myself) believe this council never had any intention but to pay lip service to you, the public, on this or any other issue involving anyone other than their special interest friends.
We would like to include our local newspaper, which went out and reported on the position of each councillor on the succession bylaw (a rather lengthy article justifying council’s reasoning behind their decision to not adopt a succession bylaw).
Somehow, the paper forgot to include in their article the opinion of those who placed this succession bylaw before council in the first place. Or just maybe, this wonderful, and (in our opinion) special interest paper, is protecting its friends rather than reporting the events surrounding this issue.
What is tragically sad is this paper failed to give media coverage on three presentations, made at last Monday night’s council meeting (March 24), on private investigators verses the ombudsman being used for violations of closed-door meetings.
A presentation also made on the per home costs to taxpayers of the public library, as well as an economic plan for Fort Frances that includes transportation.
We made those presentations, gave word for word copies of our presentation to the local newspaper reporter, yet you, the public, were denied proper media coverage on very serious and costly ventures.
Well, it’s time to take our community back. It belongs to everyone who lives here and not just the select few. We have a say in how we want our community to run and how our tax dollars are spent.
I am inviting anyone interested in aligning with this cause to contact myself, (Bill Krukoski) at 274-3445 or Allan T. Bedard at 274-7288. Please leave a message if we’re not in and we will return your call.
Our plan is to form a committee of taxpayers who have had enough of special interest politics, and want to address the issues with both town council and the missing media link in Fort Frances.
In closing, Mr. Bedard presently is preparing a presentation for officials down east who may be in a position to help address our media problems in Fort Frances in the event local initiatives, which will be made, fail.
All we can say is thank God for the West End Weekly and Channel 10.
We made an effort recently to work with council—only to have it slapped back in our face. We find our overtures were in vain.
Thank you, Mr. Editor, for printing this letter.
Yours truly,
Bill Krukoski
Fort Frances, Ont.
Editor’s note: Due to time and space constraints, an article on the three presentations to council referred to above was put over until this week’s edition.