Mayor Lisa Helps of Victoria, B.C.

April 28, 2016 – The easy-to- get- along with Victoria Times Colonist attackss Mayor Lisa Helps over her sewage treatment tactics. “It appears to be process for the sake of process, much ado about nothing”

Before Victoria Mayor Lisa Helps got into the politicial business a few years back, she raised chickens in her back yard. Its time to go back to raising chickens.

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  The Lady That’s Known as Lou

  A year ago, the chicken lady bucked Victoria’s formidible NDP machine and limped into the mayoralty atop a new-age gee-whiz  trend — so did Mayor Nishi of Calgary — so did even Mayor Richard Atwell of Saanich. During the campaign, Helps gave up her cackling chickens and took to tweeting mothy,  trendy clichés like “AWESOME!!!” and “INCREDIBLE!!!!”. Voters should have known that moth-worn clichés, as George Orwell said, “issue from the mouths of moth-worn nincompoops”. Since Atwell and Helps were elected and Nishi was re-elected a year ago, a very unlikeable and arrogant Atwell has displayed real guts and can-do against a severely entrenched bureaucracy and Nishi has stood up to Calgary’s establishment and got good things done. Not Helps. The NDP mayor she put out of office, Dean Fortin, relied on and trusted his “staff” who lied to him and manipulated him to build an unnecessary new bridge to the tune of $110 million and got him defeated. Helps’s done exactly the same thing. She has accomplished nothing.

• Staff at Victoria’s regional government (called “The CRD”) ordered Helps not to talk to any of The University of Victoria ocean scientist who all had declared against a billion dollar sewage plant designed to replace an existing, perfectly functioning 30-year-old plant. She clicked her heels and slammed down the phone when the scientists called. The regional staff then appointed her the Chairperson of the regional government committee in charge of the plant. Already, the plant project has wasted $60-Million already and has accomplished nothing.
• When someone discovered that Victoria/Esquimalt’s touchy-feely-forget-law-enforcement Police Chief Frank Eisner had secretly tweeted the wife of one of his men, Helps and Esquimalt Mayor Barbara Desjardins lied to Victoria’s media to cover up the heinous crime. Stan Lowe, B.C. ‘s Police Complaint’s Commissioner fired both Helps and Desjardins as Chairpersons of the Victoria Esquimalt Police Board and fired Eisner. (For those luddites unfamiliar with the ways of the internet, tweeting is restricted to 140 characters.)
• Helps  and two other new-age city counsellors tried to create a tent city in one of Victoria’s neighbourhood parks; “Staff” called a meeting of the park’s neighbours. Staff stacked the meeting with homeless people, each paid $20 with taxpayer funds. As Staff hid at the back of the room, the park’s neighbours hooted down the hapless Helps and two other new-age city councillors.
• With visions dancing in her head of turning Victoria into a car-free city by 2017, the mayor wants to ban parking in one of its quaint retail villages, Cook Street Village — already economically fragile. The retail merchants of the village — many had supported Helps in her election fight against NDPer Fortin — are up in arms. It will not end well.

Links:

• Cook Street bike lanes bring worries about fewer parking spots — Bill Cleverley — January 20, 2016
• Homelessness workshop turned into fiasco — Barbara Wiggins — September 18, 2015
• Politics and the English Language — George Orwell — 1946