LETTERS TO THE EDITOR REGARDING WOOLWICH POLITICIANS ARE ILLUMINATING

Ken Jensen another environmental professional involved with CPAC as a SWAT (Soil, Water, Air & Technical) member has offerred his opinion that CPAC getting facts and data is important but even more so is getting the public on board. In other words CPAC must win the Public Relations battle. This is not easy despite the common sense reality that Chemtura are a multi national, multi billion dollar corporation whose major interest is shareholders' profits not environmental sustainability or cleanup.

Hence I have been watching with interest as our three local newspapers have all been publishing atories regarding the election trials and tribulations (and soon maybe more) of our local Councillors. To date that has been Scott Hahn and Mark Bauman. I expect there will soon be mention of Mayor Shantz's unusual and creative election expense accounting and other election expense errors. Whether a fouth Councillor will soon be under scrutiny is a possibility.

Last Friday the Elmira Independent published a Letter To The Editor from Joan Coutu of Elmira. The next day the Woolwich Observer published a Letter To The Editor from Sebastian Seibel-Achenbach, CPAC's vice Chair. While these Letters are both quite supportive of the necessity for investigation into improper, inaccurate and incomplete or totally missing expense reports make no mistake there were several Letters taking the opposite position. I would characterize some of them as rude and ignorant. That is unfortunate as a couple of others while contrary to the opinions of Ms. Coutu and Mr. Seibel-Achenbach were thought provoking and I can say in my case certainly made me stop and carefully rethink my position.

While all of these criticisms and public scrutiny of Woolwich Councillors are appropriate, certainly CPAC, SWAT and public stakeholders can not help but be watching very carefully as to how this all plays out. If Council as a whole and most certainly specific members of Council lose credibility and have their teflon images tarnished, whether due to incompetence or worse, it can only assist CPAC in their life and death battle against the likes of Mark and Sandy along with the benign neglect of most other Councillors.