Re: Meeting times need to be changed, Joyce Behnsen letter, Courier July 14
Council meets in the afternoon to save tax dollars, as staff are paid overtime, or time in lieu for attending evening meetings. We do regularly meet in the evenings as committee of the whole, and also for most public hearings. One might expect that Joyce might have the skills to research and support facts, given she hopes to become mayor.
For medical reasons, I called in to council meetings for four months in 2014, as I was unable to attend in person. I was not absent save two meetings and my body in the chamber. My voice and debate was fully present. My attendance can be confirmed by the minutes and Joyce has been told I was present numerous times. Why does she continue misinforming the public?
While very ill with a medical condition this term – by doctor’s orders – I was forbidden from calling in. Is Joyce suggesting elected people who become ill are unfit to be a councillor? Or that when ill a councillor ought to resign, triggering a byelection that would cost about $80k? Or?
Joyce seems to have a long term obsession with me, my health and some imagined power she believes I hold.
Additionally, attributing such power to me for council decisions is misleading the public she claims she wants to serve. As someone who held the position of councillor for four years, one would think she would know that no one member of council controls anything – decisions are made by majority. And committees of council only make recommendations.
As a five-term locally elected person (two terms on the school district under the name Kathy Ross) about 13 years total, I have been ill and unable to be present, even by phone a total of eight months. That is eight out of 156 months. For 146 months, I have contributed to local government initiatives. Joyce by comparison was a member of council for 48 months.
Some elected people in office in the aggregate take vacations and have illnesses that added together would be just as much, perhaps more.
Repeatedly bringing up medical status is dancing dangerously close to invasion of personal medical privacy.
Kate Marsh,
Chemainus