INCOMPETENCE AND CORRUPTION FLOURISH TOGETHER

And if you think about it, why wouldn't incompetence go hand in hand with corruption? Keep in mind one of the definitions of corruption is "riddled with errors". In other words under certain circumstances corruption is merely the net result of incompetence left unchecked. A prime example would be the 2010 to 2014 Woolwich Council. They had a bunch of newbies on Council who frankly neither had the experience/intelligence nor the smarts to do their jobs. Julie Ann Herteis was a prime example. I saw some of her inexperience at work as she struggled to keep up at Council meetings. That said I do not know her personally other than through Council where indeed she was a very petty individual all about "payback". I truly believe that she honestly had no clue as to how badly her inexperience and incompetence affected citizens and thus their attitudes towards her. All that said I have absolutely zero reason to believe that she was corrupt in the financial or ethical sense of the word. She was simply way out of her depth and at least part of her problem was her closeness to Mayor Cowan and having followed him into politics on his advice. He wanted a loyal foot soldier rather than an independent, thinking colleague.

Todd Cowan was corrupt certainly in the sense of incompetent. Part of his defence at trial over criminal charges was that he was dyslexic. In other words he had difficulty reading. Good God, politicians don't need many skills but that would be one. Also he claimed that he wasn't good at figures or accounting practices hence leading to his expense "errors". Well overall the judge bought his story so again I suggest that incompetence and corruption can go hand in hand.

Our current Council are another example. Half of them are newbies although I will say that Councillor Merlihan and Councillor Larry Shantz are by no means inexperienced. Councillor Hahn is at least as smart and experienced as Councillor Herteis however. Current issues with incompetence at Woolwich Township are exemplified by a recent posting I did in which I indicated that both the TAG and RAC public meetings were being postponed again. This information was received from a reliable member of those groups and I have zero reason to doubt it. Unfortunately I checked the Woolwich Township website a few days back and sure enough they have not updated their Agenda. I checked again this morning twenty minutes ago and same thing. They've still got the wrong dates including the TAG (Technical Advisory Group) meeting week from today. Come on guys it's hard enough getting the public out to these meetings even when they've finally after decades of self-serving scheduling, finally been put at 6:30 pm., for TAG at least. The self-important people at RAC still prefer 3 pm. in the afternoon when working people can not attend. Inaccurate dates and lack of prompt, public reschedules guarantees a lack of public attendance.