I’ve had many requests for two types of updates:

 - infrequent (approx. once a week) to highlight just the most significant news, and

- more frequent (3-4 times a week, or whenever anything particularly noteworthy happens).

    To address these requests, I’ve created two InsideLangford mailing lists.  The process is not yet automated, so for the meantime just send an email to steven.hurdle@gmail.com and tell me in the message body whether you want “frequent” or “infrequent” updates.  You’ll receive a short email Read the rest of this entry »

   These letters to the editor, oddly both from Saanich residents, are interesting because in a certain sense they’re both correct.  It can be argued that both supporters and opponents of Langford Council are both right, but they’re looking at opposite sides of the same coin.  Efficient governments are generally only efficient in the ways the government in question cares about, and if your priorities as a citizen happen to be different than City Hall’s (as residents near the business mentioned in the second letter found out), your issues may not be resolved speedily, or at all.  The first letter celebrates how quickly Langford can get things done when City Council and city staff put their minds to it, and the second letter shows that this courtesy does not extend to everyone or every issue, as local residents maintain they have been voicing concerns about the drywall business for four years with no resolution.

   On the issue of efficiency, government at all levels has a hard time being both efficient and just. And most of us, push come to shove, will take “just” over “efficient” if we can’t have both.

- Steven Hurdle -

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Good Langford

letter to the Times Colonist Read the rest of this entry »