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The overarching rhythm of Whistler is fast paced and frantic. Urban playful.
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The overarching rhythm of Whistler is fast paced and frantic. Urban playful. At least it seems that way compared to Smilin’ Dog Manor where the overarching rhythm is one that makes cultures generally thought of as operating on the mañana principle seem frantic.

And so it was that I took advantage of a rainout in St. Louis Monday night to slow the pace down, catch my breath, kick back and watch things unfold s-l-o-w-l-y.

I attended council… at least the first several hours of it.

Almost immediately I noticed a palpable change in the power atmosphere in MY seat of local government. Council chambers buzzed with excitement. You could smell the anticipation. There was the biggest crowd I’d ever seen at council on a night nothing on the agenda screamed out “CONTROVERSY.” I got comfy, broke out my snacks, settled in for some hummin’ entertainment.

Paying rapt attention, I quickly realized almost everyone was there to get a plaque to honour the outstanding commitment the group they represented had made to implementing some element of the action plans of Whistler 2020,   aka The Plan. Most of them, showing the abundance of common sense that’ll help make The Plan a screamin’ success, left immediately thereafter. The rest followed soon enough.

Speculating on the motivations of the five of us remaining who weren’t on the muni payroll, I cracked open the JuJubes and felt a growing admiration for Mayor Ken and the Group of Six. What deeply-rooted sense of civic commitment, service, lust for power, pride, glory, satisfaction and whatever else spices the motivational soup of the human soul drives these people to spend the time and energy to do the underpaid, underappreciated work they do?

My gratitude and admiration was brought quickly crashing and burning back to reality as soon as the first PowerPoint presentation fired up. PowerPoint! Arrrrgh! Proving once again that perhaps one in a hundred people actually know how to use PowerPoint effectively… no one used it very effectively. Thankfully, there weren’t 100 presentations made to find the exception to the rule. It only seemed that way.

Not wanting to digress too much, I won’t get into the whole tell-your-story philosophy of effective PP shows. That is a mountain too big to climb. But I will pass on this single chestnut of advice to anyone who hopes to become that one in one hundred who actually lets all their good work — and there was some very good work being presented — shine through a PP presentation instead of being rendered mind-numbing: DON’T READ YOUR SLIDES! Those of us still awake will read the slides; you expand on their meaning, tell their story, sing their praises.

Whistler 2020 — Motto: I plan; therefore I am — out of the way, we finally got down to the evening’s real entertainment. Cracking open a fresh box of Raisinettes, I rubbed the sleep from my eyes, picked the cotton out of my ears and braced myself. The issue at hand was this: Shall we (council) approve a $8.7 million plan to expand, refurbish and renovate municipal hall over the course of the next two years, or should we punt the issue back for further consideration?

On the face of it, the answer to that question seems pretty simple. At least the people I’ve been talking to — a random if unscientifically drawn cross-section of losers and dreamers, movers and shakers who live here — think the answer is simple, or so I surmise given most of them generally answer the question with their own question, to wit: “Are you out of your mind?”

But no question seems simple when it’s your fanny all squishy-comfy in the seat of power.

In what might go down in history as one of the most bizarre voting configurations we’ll ever see on this council — and one, I might add, that made me wonder what was in their bottled water — Councillor Nancy, Councillor Ralph and Mayor Ken were in favour of moving ahead, spending the dough, going boldly where no one else wanted to go. I was beginning to suspect someone had spiked my Junior Mints with something psychedelic. Nancy, Ken and Ralph?

That, of course, left Councillors Bob, Tim, Gord and Eckhard callin’ the tune and droppin’ the hammer on what surely would have been an ill-advised project at least someone in town would have noticed… if not immediately, surely when construction actually began and a couple of parking places disappeared.

The Group of Four had many reasons for their opposition. The project was too expensive — and it goes without saying that the $8.7 million budget would have ballooned to library-size almost before the hoarding went up — the timing couldn’t be worse with the Olympic™ construction crunch sucking up all available labour, the expansion was too big, whatever efficiencies were realized by actually having enough space for existing staff to all have a place to work would be offset by the disruption of having no space for any staff to work during the 18 month construction cycle, blah, blah, blah.

But three arguments popped out of the roundtable debate — and thanks for holding as much of it as you did in public — that ought to be kicked around more. First was the notion voiced by Tim and Gord that once the Olympics™ are a fading memory and once Whistler 2020 is finished(?) muni staff numbers might actually decline. Smaller government is, quite possibly, the most radical idea ever expressed by government itself.

The second very weird element was that both sides were able to rally support for their position within the pages of Whistler 2020. The nay side saw violence being done to the document by the increased size and footprint of the proposed renovation and argued we were building our way to unsustainability. The yea side found the greener, albeit bigger, healthier building and more user-friendly workspace arguments compelling. Where’s Solomon when you need him?

But it was Ken’s argument in favour I found most in need of further examination. Ken’s personally embarrassed when he has to take visiting dignitaries to muni hall. It’s old, it’s tatty, quite possibly it still smells like the steak and potatoes served decades ago when it was the Keg.

It’d be nicer if muni hall was housed in an 18 th century chalet. But that’s hard to do in a 40-year-old town. Nonetheless, I feel Kenny’s pain. I’m personally embarrassed sometimes when a friend visits and wonders why I live in a space slightly smaller than my old dorm room. So I’ll share my solution to this problem of sanity, not vanity. I just explain it’s the Whistler Premium, the tradeoff for living in this unbelievable place.

Then I take ’em out for a drink. Works every time.