{"id":9702,"date":"2016-01-22T15:38:06","date_gmt":"2016-01-22T20:38:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/huntsville.dopperonline.ca\/?p=9702"},"modified":"2016-01-23T09:22:03","modified_gmt":"2016-01-23T14:22:03","slug":"chamber-versus-roads-no-contest-if-meeting-attendance-is-the-indicator-opinion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/doppleronline.ca\/huntsville\/chamber-versus-roads-no-contest-if-meeting-attendance-is-the-indicator-opinion\/","title":{"rendered":"Chamber versus Roads, no contest if meeting attendance is the indicator &#8211; Opinion"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>One of the things you do when you are covering public meetings is estimate the number of people in attendance. Depending on the size of the crowd this can become somewhat of a science. You count the number of people in a row times the number of rows in the room, plus the round tables, the stragglers, the standers and the wanderers. You add it all together and get a very rough estimate.<\/p>\n<p>Such was the case this week at the Town\u2019s public meeting on event tourism. No doubt people sitting behind me wondered why I kept gazing back while counting on my fingers.<\/p>\n<div style=\"float: left; margin-right: 14px;\"><strong> <broadstreet-zone zone-id=\"45658\" keywords=\"\" soft-keywords=\"true\" zone-alias=\"\"><\/broadstreet-zone><\/strong><\/div>\n<p>The same cannot be said for the public meeting two days later on our Town\u2019s roads. No crowd-estimating science was needed to determine the number of people at that meeting. I can tell you precisely. There were eight people from the general public. More specifically, there were eight people from the general public, nine politicians, seven municipal staff, one Chamber ED, four media, and two theatre volunteers in the 400-seat Algonquin Theatre.<\/p>\n<p>Eight people showed up at a meeting in which a $2 million budget was being discussed! The meeting earlier in the week, ostensibly to discuss a $50,000 municipal grant to the Chamber of Commerce, garnered an audience of about 200 people.<\/p>\n<p>What kind of message does this send to our municipal leaders?<\/p>\n<p>Council has been grappling with the budget for months, trying to find more money to put into roads without increasing the levy too much. They have been forced to make some tough decisions. Two of those decisions came raining down on them this week. Ironman, at a cost to the community of $100,000 was cancelled and a $50,000 grant to the Chamber was nixed, both with the stated desire of moving more money into roads.<\/p>\n<p>Council put their necks on the line, making tough budget decisions they say local taxpayers have been asking for and what happens? Two hundred people show up asking that the Town continue to fund the Chamber. Eight people show up to hear about roads.<\/p>\n<p>What an insult to our politicians. I\u2019m sorry people, but you can\u2019t sit in your comfy chair at home and complain about your taxes and complain about the state of your road if you are not willing to participate in the solution.<\/p>\n<p>Honestly, given how this week played out, I wouldn\u2019t blame council if they added the Chamber\u2019s $50,000 back on to the taxpayers.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><broadstreet-zone zone-id=\"45657\" keywords=\"\" soft-keywords=\"true\" zone-alias=\"\"><\/broadstreet-zone><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One of the things you do when you are covering public meetings is estimate the number of people in attendance. Depending on the size of the crowd this can become [&#8230;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":9705,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[26,406,502],"class_list":["post-9702","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-commentary","tag-breaking","tag-huntsville-council","tag-roads"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v25.8 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Chamber versus Roads, no contest if meeting attendance is the indicator - Opinion - Huntsville Doppler<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/doppleronline.ca\/huntsville\/chamber-versus-roads-no-contest-if-meeting-attendance-is-the-indicator-opinion\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Chamber versus Roads, no contest if meeting attendance is the indicator - Opinion - Huntsville Doppler\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"One of the things you do when you are covering public meetings is estimate the number of people in attendance. 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