Why is the City of Abbotsford posting self-serving Chamber of Commerce opinion pieces before an election?
By Mike Archer. The City of Abbotsford has posted a link on its website to an opinion piece about economic development published by the Abbotsford Chamber of Commerce in the Abbotsford News.
The Chamber has been heavily criticized by those outside of the traditional media in Abbotsford for getting it wrong on almost every issue of any significance regarding economic development or growth in the City of Abbotsford for over a decade.
The Chamber was a fierce and vocal supporter of Plan A; a loud proponent of the City’s plan to spend $300,000,000 on a new water supply when top brass and politicians knew we had more than enough water to last us more than a decade or two; a boisterous cheerleader for the Abbotsford Heat and the Abbotsford Centre; and a strong advocate of having Abbotsford taxpayers pay a third of the cost of two new federal overpasses over the TransCanada highway.
It is hard to imagine the economic mess which has been created over the last decade without the active participation of the Abbotsford Chamber of Commerce not only in pushing hard during the planning and discussion stages but in acting as a vocal marketing vehicle in selling some of the worst decisions in the city’s history to the business community and taxpayers.
Simply put; It is difficult to imagine a more wrong-headed, misguided, disastrously and consistently wrong agenda than the agenda of the un-elected members of the executives of the Abbotsford Chamber of Commerce and the ADBA. They have consistently and chronically got it wrong on every issue for more than a decade. How these people stay in business with such a perfect record of failure is beyond me.
Why we allow them near decision makers at City Hall and the public expenditure of our money is one of the biggest mysteries in Abbotsford public life.
It is completely inappropriate for the municipal government to promote a self-serving opinion piece published by a local organization which has distinguished itself by being completely and utterly incapable of independent cognitive thought, or performing any function so well as its chosen role as lapdog for the bureaucrats and politicians, who have brought the city to the edge of ruin.
That this must be pointed out to them is confirmation of the fact that this city is in dire need of change from the top down.The new mayor and council must also stay as far away from un-elected organizations such as Chamber of Commerce and the Abbotsford Downtown Business Association (ADBA) which have both played a central role in the public embarrassment of an entire community by their hijacking of the public agenda in Abbotsford for the narrow and parochial interests of their own members.