Why is Patricia Ross Lending Her Name To This Farce?

By Mike Archer. Mayor Banman’s Task Force on Homelessness has held two meetings and heard multiple suggestions and proposals, most of which were adopted by other cities during the last century.

From the point of view of the two old politicians chairing the Task Force, it almost sounds like this is first time they are hearing this stuff.

And yet; Patty Ross and John Smith have been sitting through Abbotsford Council meetings with nary a yawn for nine years. If this is really the first time they’ve heard this stuff they are either deaf or dumb.

What unadulterated BS.

Two quotes from the Abbotsford News’ coverage of the Task Force’s second meeting tell it all:

“Multiple service providers expressed concerns that the Abbotsford Social Development Advisory Committee (ASDAC), a group created in 2006 to provide advice to council on addressing social issues, has not been meeting.”

“Ron van Wyk, associate executive director at the Mennonite Central Committee BC, sits on the task force and is a member of ASDAC. He said that ASDAC had made that suggestion in the past, but the recommendation was not acknowledged by council.”

We understand why John Smith, the councilor who ran ASDAC during all those years when none of their recommendations ever made it through to the council table, would want to have his hand on the pulse of the biggest potential danger to his continued career at the public trough.

Why on earth is Ross associating herself with this travesty. She has tested the waters before to see whether or not business people and community leaders think she has the right stuff to be mayor.

She got a resounding ‘No’ for an answer. She is a one-issue candidate. People are perfectly prepared have her look after our air but not anything more substantive like money or planning or poverty.

Banman and Smith are so far wearing the chicken manure scandal, the mishandling of the Standoff in Jubilee, and the vicious, mean and unseemly mistreatment of homeless citizens by City staff and City police. No one thinks this Task Force has anything to offer except in providing Banman an excuse not to talk to the media about the kind of City Hall he’s been running.

Why is she putting all of the political capitol she has collected at risk by attaching her name to this sham?

She’s astute enough to know people will be voting in November on homelessness. But she appears to have picked the wrong horse on which to ride across this finish line at the front of the parade.