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Anatomy of Change – Part II

Anatomy of Change – Part II A good atlas is a treasure chest of information and a window to wonder. Crammed with maps, naturally, a good atlas goes well beyond simply duplicating the cartographer’s art.

Anatomy of Change – Part II

A good atlas is a treasure chest of information and a window to wonder. Crammed with maps, naturally, a good atlas goes well beyond simply duplicating the cartographer’s art. It explores relationships between those plotted land masses and the oceans that surround them, the tectonic forces creating them, the distribution of resources and energy fuelling them, the people inhabiting them and the more nebulous concepts of political geography.

But even the best atlas can’t answer the simple question that often brings us to consult it in the first place: Where do I want to go?

For all its detailed information, neither can Whistler 2020, our highly-touted, widely-praised Official Community Sustainability Plan. While it might help us get wherever we’re going and even help us avoid some perils along the way, the Plan is mute on where exactly it is we’re headed.

That’s the job – one of many – of leadership.

If it seems at the moment we’re rather short on answers to the question of where we’re going, if it seems we’re lurching from issue to issue with no clear vision of which are important, which aren’t and why the difference, if it appears things keep sneaking up on us, you just might ask yourself who’s steering the good ship Whistler and whether they really have any vision of where it is they’re taking us.

The good news is, there’s change in the wind. Our current cap’n is standing down, trading the rough seas of politics for a tranquil Hawaiian paradise.

The bad news is, the new cap’n could be at least as sightless and maybe a whole lot worse.

One of the problems with politics, especially in a small town like Whistler, is that it rarely attracts the best and brightest. That’s partly because the remuneration is woefully inadequate. Consider the mayor’s salary if you will. Coming in at just around fifty-five thousand bucks, it isn’t even mid-level management material at the MotherCorp, is about 25 per cent of what the former administrator made and is even a far cry from what our three assistant fire chiefs each pull down every year.

But elected office isn’t necessarily supposed to be about money. It’s about power, prestige, public service and statesmanship/personship. It’s about making your mark and leaving your town a better place for you having been there.

Or at least it should be. Often though, it isn’t. And that’s not entirely the fault of the people running for office. It’s the fault of the people electing the people running for office. It’s the voters, stupid!

The cruel adage about people getting the government they deserve is, at least, partly correct. Consider the very large percentage of our fellow Whistleratics who consistently emphasize the pathetic in apathetic and can’t be bothered to vote. Their hedonistic world is so tiny they don’t care who shapes it. The best that can be said for them is at least they don’t cast an uninformed ballot.

Which, unfortunately, is what a considerable number of people do. They trundle off to the polling station or mark an advance/absentee ballot because they remember from civics class that voting is both their democratic right and duty. They missed the next civics class where they would have learned it is also their job to find out what the candidates are all about. The fact they know squat about the candidates and what they stand for doesn’t get in the way of them making what amounts to an eeny-meeny-miney-moe decision for one of them.

If, at this point, you’re beginning to feel a bit smug about being one of the informed voters, not so fast. I’m not certain being passively informed is good enough. Going to candidates’ meetings, listening carefully, discussing the election with your friends and drawing your own conclusions is a good start. And if you live in a big city or are voting in a national election, it’s probably good enough.

But too often, we attend, we listen, we wonder what the candidates are smoking… and we say nothing. This time around, saying nothing isn’t good enough. This time around, passively accepting the platitudes and bullshit, the half-baked ideas and grandiose schemes, the good intentions and best efforts isn’t good enough. This time around we need leadership, we need vision, we need good internal and external management skills, we need someone who can and wants to engage this community to rise to the challenges ahead and we need someone sitting in the mayor’s chair who will set the moral tone for the way this town deals with opportunity, threat and growth.

That’s a tall order. Knowingly or unwittingly, recent administrations have seemingly gone out of their way to alienate the politically engaged segment of the population. That there is even a politically engaged core left is a testament to the power of optimism. Scrapping the town meeting – itself having become a pale ghost of its former self – was a largely symbolic first blow. Having morphed from a free-for-all to a tightly controlled, facilitator-led attempt to get public input at the front end of policy making, it dissolved into a dog and pony show asking for public input on the tail end.

And notwithstanding one councillor’s belief we should just "get over" the initial CSP consultant debacle, it stands as a watershed event in the annals of political naiveté and the utter lack of understanding of the dynamics of citizen engagement. The best that can be said for the administration’s ham-fisted handling of that is that they either didn’t know what they were getting into or they failed to vet the prospective consultants adequately. Either way, they missed a golden opportunity to utter the most effective words leaders can utter: We’re sorry; we screwed up.

Their backroom deal with the World Economic Forum blew up in their face when they failed to engage the public at the beginning of the process. They could have easily sold that idea to the town, especially in light of Whistler-Blackcomb’s resistance to it. But they got caught in a gotcha from which they couldn’t recover. Bad management.

Despite the overwhelming support of the public for the 2010 Olympic bid, they had so little faith in the consultative and democratic process, they wouldn’t allow a simple for-or-against question to be tacked on to either of the ballots necessary to complete the last election cycle. The measure would have carried handsomely and silenced, or at least toned down, the critics.

And now, our aloha bound mayor has the chutzpah to suggest the arena issue will be decided by the public. This after more or less cutting a deal with Squamish and weeks of "trust us" politics.

Did I say something about things maybe getting worse? We’ll see when we explore more about leadership and vision.