Letter to the Editor: Council is simply playing with power

This announcement is no more than political manoeuvering in the face of many residents’ massive dissatisfaction with and growing distrust of the way the council is run in Kingston.

It pays only lip service to the need for councillors to act properly.

It does not give residents the right to call a petition to remove councillors because they have failed to follow the code of conduct, or because they have failed to make decisions where the rationale for such decisions is clear, including showing that information that shows how residents’ and other stakeholders’ concerns have been addressed.

The grounds for calling a petition thus avoid many of the reasons why residents in Kingston may currently want to call a petition for the removal of a councillor.

I also take issue with the need for 33 per cent of residents in a ward to sign a petition to remove a councillor.

In the case of whether Tim Dennen should have been removed as councillor, Kevin Davis implied in an article in the Surrey Comet (Total recall, July 11, 2014) that it was hard enough to get 10 per cent of people to become engaged with such an issue.

I believe that a 33 per cent turnout in a non-local or national election would be almost impossible to achieve.

Why not make it so that 10 per cent or even fewer of a ward’s residents need to sign a recall petition to get rid of a councillor, with a much wider ability for residents to call a petition in the first place?

Otherwise, it will never happen.

This is not democracy, it is playing with power.

CAROLINE SCOTT
Kingston

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