I was so amazed to learn that the Montreal agglomeration council refused to fund any part of a Pointe Claire sound barrier project, on the south side of the Highway 20, from St. John's Boulevard to Sources Boulevard, going to Montreal, saying that Highway 20 is an arterial road and thus not their responsibility as Jan. 1, when bill 22 takes effect and changes the island s governing structure. This is the most stupid and dumb excuse I ever heard, since we all know that Highway 20 is a provincial highway.
If so, how come the Lachine wall barrier, built in 2005, was paid 75 per cent by Transport Quebec and 25 per cent by Montreal? It means that the taxpayers on Montreal Island, including Pointe Claire residents, contributed to the cost of this wall.
What I think is that Calude Dauphin, borough mayor of Lachine, is a well regarded and influent member of Mayor Gerald Tremblay's team, and it looks like what he asks for, he gets it.
To prove my point, hereafter, is another example of what I am saying. Do you remember, earlier this year, when the residents of Lachine were complaining that they could not get a decent night of sleep because of the constant airplane noise at night. Then Dauphin supported them, and he publicly said, that it might be time to reconsider Mirabel airport. Guess what happened next, the flights over Lachine were diverted elsewhere over the West Island. What's a coincidence?
Democracy is not only a one way road.
One of the major issues I would like to address is city cleanliness. Driving every morning to work, you always see take-out wrappers, half-full or empty water bottles and plastic bags littering the streets. The main questions are:
• Why do people leave their garbage on the streets instead of simply carrying it until they find a can or get home and properly dispose of it?
• Why do people open the car window and throw out a Kleenex or those clear cigarette wrappers? At a red light, I actually saw a take-out tray with coffee cups still stuck in it. So did a driver just opened his door, dropped the tray at the light and drove off? In both these cases, out-of-sight, out-of-mind applies.
• Why not intercept a white plastic grocery bag flying in the wind, instead of letting it go until somebody else does it or better yet, let it get stuck on a tree branch or a fence?
• Why don’t people take better care of the front of their house, including the street? Not the entire neighborhood, just the street! It doesn’t matter that you are not the person that dropped the wrapper, coffee cup or recyclable plastic water bottle there. Is it so difficult to do something as simple as bending over to pick up litter on your yard or street?
These examples are only the tip of the iceberg. No it’s not the city’s responsibility to pick up after its citizens. No it’s not the blue collar workers not doing their jobs. It’s US, the population that have taken the world for granted. Start thinking of other people… not just yourselves.
In the spring of 2003, I was informed that two neighbours on Lakeshore Road received "peanuts" for their waterfronts, $8 per square foot from the City of Pointe Claire. On contacting the Tribunal Administratif du Quebec I learned that my neighbour received a much larger amount, $36 /sq.ft. This was substantially more than the basic offer of $6/sq.ft. paid to my wife and I. As we fully co-operated with the city and representatives of the city had indicated that it would not pay more, I took the huge discrepancy in value up with the Borough of Pointe Claire in June 2003. In response to my third follow up letter, I received two letters from the borough that included the following promises:
On Oct.14, 2003, the city wrote, "should we find a way, rest assured that we will contact you." On Oct. 20, 2003, they wrote, "rest assured that we will do everything in our power to be of help."
After the city regained its former status in January 2006, I re-activated correspondence. Five months later, I received a response from the city that included acknowledging the "unfairness" resulting from the expropriation action by the city, making an issue of the unfairness to taxpayers. In a recent presentation to city council, I showed that the unfairness per taxpayer was $5 whereas the unfairness to us was $5 + $33,488. Clearly, the city had found a way to resolve the discrepancy but chose not to follow it. In so doing, the City of Pointe Claire broke both of the written promises that were made to me In October 2003 as shown above.
The city has not had the decency to apologize for the huge unfair discrepancy or for reneging on the two written promises that it made to me despite repeated requests for it to do so. The city should also apologize for being unco-operative and for treating two former longtime residents and taxpayers disrespectfully. With interest, the amount involved is now more than twice the amount shown above. A reasonable way to resolve this impasse would be for the city to apologize and send a cheque for $35,000 to the Stephen Lewis Foundation.
