A High Prairie citizen tells The Page the $41,406.86 Sage Report bill isn’t the end.
The money was paid to the consultant hired by the Town to find evidence of Code of Conduct violations of two councillors. It doesn’t include the cost of special meetings of council, or any other expenses. All of which could easily add up to around another $10,000 or more! Or less!
But hey, who is counting? Taxpayers?
Maybe the super-select High Prairie Watchdog Committee Tracking Useless Political Spending (WaCTUPS)? Too bad that one doesn’t exist.
Meanwhile, back at Transparency and Accountability Central, our High Prairie citizen continues: “These things never end when they say it’s all done. One way or another there are going to be more costs. Just wait.”
Well, as one taxpayer said when she heard this, “Oh gee. Actually, I can wait. Until the next election.”
We don’t know about yourselves, but there is one thing we love about Canadian weather: The seasons!
In fact, it isn’t just the change from winter to spring to summer and fall and back again, it’s how weather can change in just a couple of days. Sometimes, even in a few minutes!
We like that!
But there is a dark side to it. We get really, really tired of long stretches of the same weather. A week of -30 C? Sure can’t wait until it warms up to to -10 C!
A stretch of +80 F (that happens so rare we can’t remember, is that plus 30 or more C? Or more? Sakes alive, it’s so hot when are we ever able to sit outside and enjoy a cool breeze!
Two or three days of super hot, super cold, or super in the middle is just fine. But if it runs longer, when it’s dry, we want rain. When it’s raining, we want sun. When it’s cool, we want warm.
The good news is, wait a bit. It will change. But when it doesn’t? Well, just hit the snooze button and fall asleep at lunch. Hit the sack early. Sleep in.
The recent period of over 30C took a long time to get over that. But it finally did. And we reacted the way we always do during the spell. Slept in. Snoozed at lunch. Hit the sack early. Works for us, folks.
You know, so many of us are used to weather changing, we don’t even own an umbrella!
And a great deal of us don’t have proper rain gear or even a semi-waterproof jacket. Real rubber boots? Only if we are in the field as part of our work. Else it’s sneakers, of course.
Same thing for winter. No -40C snow boots. No real parkas. Or proper winter mitts or head gear and a big scarf. Not even a pair of lined pants.
We know what you anti be-prepared folks say. If you can’t go in style, you ain’t going at all!
Frankly, you are missing out all that Alberta outdoors has to offer.
As we write this, we are looking out the window into steady rain around Lesser Slave Lake. Smoke fills the air so with rain clouds and the smoke, it is as dark as shortly past sunset, about 10:30 p.m. The clock says three in the afternoon.
If we could send some of this, or a lot of this rain to Jasper, we would.
We are checking in constantly on the fire situation there. The most recent report had one-third to one-half of buildings burned.
So many of us in the region have been through the same thing, either having to evacuate and leaving things behind, or actually losing our homes, farms and businesses to fire.
Devastating. Our thoughts go with all those in Jasper and our northern communities hit by fire.
“So you lost your phone again!? What do you expect me to do about it? Call 911 for a Search and Rescue for you? Ask for mobilization of the Armed Forces to help you find it? Tell the bank you can’t make loan payments anymore because you are incapacitated? Call Facebook and Instagram and tell them to put posts on pause so you don’t miss any of them? Life’s tough. I guess you will survive a few days without knowing what the weather is like in Fort Lauderdale or Cancun.” – Grandma Smithers.
“It’s true you can’t take it with you. But you sure as heck can hide it where some other custard face can’t find it.” Grandpa Jonesy.
A friend told The Page, “Wokesters have it all wrong. They haven’t figured out that it isn’t any fun breaking rules when there aren’t any. And that’s where they are headed.”
We said, “You got it wrong. They are ditching the old rules, but they are making up new rules as they go along.”
My friend thought about that for a minute. Then he said, “It’s still the same thing. The new rules they are making up aren’t really any rules. And even if they were, they are for you, not for them.”
Congratulations to the Peace River Rotoract River Days. Good work everybody!
And a big howdy to everybody at this week’s High Prairie Elks Pro Rodeo. Yee Haw!
Have a great week!