At the October 22, 2015 SaltSpring Island Trust Meet - Alcyonenews

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Posted October 23, 2015

At the October 22, 2015 SaltSpring Island Trust Meet

For the October 22 LTC meeting, I sought to register a delegation titled “What the Trust Hides the People Must Know”. The notion is a self-evident truth given that “hiding” is a deliberate action tantamount to lying which, in turn, since “information is power”, aims at to create an unwarranted advantage and trample fairness.

The LTC and the Staff of the Trust quickly censored the delegation. Then they censored their action, i.e., they censored their censoring action and disinformed the public through the Agenda that neither the Delegation, nor the correspondence about it ever happened, which is deliberate misinformation. Here is the delegation at issue:

“A DELEGATION

for presentation to SSI LTC at its October 22, 2015 Meeting

by A.N. T. Varzeliotis

*************

What the Trust Hides the People Must Know

In the last six years I have brought numerous delegations to the LTC and to the Trust Council, desperately seeking to get the Trust to let the light of day shine on the proceedings of the Trust. Since the last election and the assumption of the SSI Chairmanship by Mr. Peter Luckham I have raised the issue of openness in governance that the Trust denies us, at least 14 times, as show in the Table following, all in vain.

Worse than that really, because the Trust reacted by suppressing the exposure of their doings. The November 1st “hide it from society” Trust skit performed by the LTC was ugly ...

Why do I persist? Because ...

... I happen to know, and this makes it incumbent on me, a citizen, to spread the word;

... aversion to open governance and an affinity for secrecy have become second nature to the Trust and this poses a serious peril to our well-being;

... if there is any chance of the Trust coming to terms with contemporary ethics, it is in forcing it to operate in front of the public eye, as the Law dictates;

... the people of SSI need the facts about the Trust for a meaningful decision on the matter of future governance;

... Winston Churchill, a well known British chap, observed that:

“Success is not final, failure is not fatal; it is the courage to continue that counts”

Following is a tabulation of SOME of my submission asking the Trust to come out from the closet into the contemporary world of Open Governance SINCE the November 2014 Elections. I have made similar submissions seamlessly since 2009, at about the same rate.

DATE	TITLE
2014
December 18	Catharsis – Making things right
2015
January 6	Fair Process
January 8	Don’t do things you would have to hide – do things you can brag about
February 2	Agenda Correction
February 26	Another Yet Call to Duty
March 19	Trust Transparency – An Oxymoron
March 19	Any Chance the Trust may learn Open Governance?
April 16	Roll In and Turn On the Camera
April 16	Trust Fakes Prudery
April 17	Bylaw Inventory
May 14	Evolution of Trust Censorship
July 9	Trust Censorship on the Upswing
August 6	Truth Gone AWOL
October 1	Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Who watches the watchdogs?

For the Town Hall session of the October 22 LTC meeting, I had planned to touch on another manifestation of the Trust affliction with secrecy. It is the concerted silence of Trustees and TrustStaff in respect to Trust and RPM Leah Hartley parting Company. Incidentally, RPM stands internationally for “revolutions per minute”, but Trust-wise denoted “regional planning manager”, designating a position parallel to “city manager” in municipalities. Normally, appointments and dis-appointments to such positions are communicated to the affected community.

Surpassingly, in his opening spiel, of that meeting, Chairman Luckham “explained” that delegations submitted to the LTC are accepted only if at least one of the Trustees requests the delegation be placed on the agenda. This is a spined version of the reality that the Trust people have seized themselves with “powers” to censor calls to account for their conduct and to silence at will citizens who may voice what their TrustPersons would not want society to hear. Moreover, for all intents and purposes it means that if a delegation displeases one Trustee, it will be suppressed. With that spiel, the Chairman was softening the target, preparing to stop me speaking at the Town Hall session about my delegation and their censoring it.

The Chairman’s message had a displeasing resonance to it and made me hand in “for the record” my placard and leaving the scene for a sane environment. Following is the paper I left with the Trust:

“Tom’s Town Hall Placard

October 22 , 2015

Tom Varzeliotis

MISCELLANY

1. The published version of the LTC Agenda lies! Again!

The Truth is that there is a Delegation and there is Correspondence. Because the LTC could not suppress them legally, they censored them illegally, in the usual SSI LTC manner.

2. On January 26, 2009 the Trust issued a News Release, signed by Linda Adams and Mark Fraser proclaiming the arrival of Leah Hartley as the “NEW RPM FOR SSI”.

On May 1, 2015, I think it was, Leah Hartley slipped off our shores, submarine-quietly. She said no goodbyes and the LTC expressed no thanks.

Then, in another sharp departure from the past, Stephan Cermak’s assumption of command was also thickly smoke screened – likely to avert notice of Leah’s departure.

Shouldn’t we know something?

Linda Adams was correct back then when she said the Trust evolves all by itself ...

Tom Varzeliotis, Booth Canal.”