OSOYOOS TIMES-February 24, 2010

Mayor Stu Wells cast an unfortunate shadow over commendable efforts by Osoyoos town council and the Town of Osoyoos to be open and transparent to the public when he complained during the Feb. 15 council meeting about Town staff spending time responding to requests for information.
For more than a year, council and Town staff have been noticeably committed to sharing information with the media and the public.
Such efforts have been refreshing and our leaders should be thanked for making valiant strides to include the community in the decision-making processes taking place at Town Hall.
This administration is much more open than the one that preceded it.
No government, however, should ever chastise those people it serves when it comes to seeking information.
Looking for answers from governments and their complimenting bureaucracies is part of the democratic process and helps keep public leaders accountable.
To express frustrations about people requesting information about the Northwest Sector Sewer Project is even worse.
A number of people affected by this project have been caught off guard about its costs and scope and they have every right to question their local governments about what hooking up to the pending extension of the Town’s sewer system may mean to them.
Such information-seeking is especially pertinent now as details about the sewer project have often been slow to come to light and have changed radically from year to year and even month to month.
While Wells may be right that some volume restrictions on information requests may be necessary to limit the amount of time and money the Town spends on digging up answers for the public, those limits, and the reasons for such restrictions, should be explained to the individual in detail on a case-by-case basis.
Regardless of whether a request for information from the Town is frivolous or “silly,” as Wells said, it’s even sillier to bring up such thoughts in a public forum.
To do so paints a picture of a municipal leadership that favours being closed, rather than open.