Tories’ ‘dumb on crime’ bill lands in our mailboxes

Kingston pen — do we really need more like it?

The latest bit of blatherskite from our Member of Parliament landed in my mailbox the other day. It’s called “Taking Action on Justice.”

What’s just as annoying as the canned content and its “tough on crime” prattle is the fact that some part of my taxes went to pay for the delivery of it to my doorstep (well, actually, rural mailbox, since Ottawa took away house-to-house delivery in my area years ago).

“I am pleased to report that in this new session of Parliament the Government of Canada (at least we’re back to calling it the Government of Canada) has introduced Bill C-10, the Safe Streets and Communities Act,” Cathy McLeod begins.

“This legislation will help ensure the safety and security of Canadians and is part of our governments (sic) commitment to taking tough action on crime.”

This scattergun piece of misdirected policy, insists the MP’s newsletter, will protect children from sexual predators, keep serious and violent offenders locked up and prevent human trafficking.

“These nine pieces of legislation are essential to ensuring justice for law-abiding Canadian families. We are following through on our commitment to them,” says McLeod.

She notes that Canada is one of the safest countries in the world, but then says crime is too high — no doubt due to all that unreported criminal activity.

I’m willing to bet that after the Conservatives have built all their new prisons, the crime rate will be even higher.

My favourite characterization of this crime bill is “Dumb on crime.” Another commentator called it “criminally stupid.”

Some places, like the U.K. and Australia, are seeing political support for more prisons, while others, like the states of Texas and California, are seeing the opposite.

California, despite having one of the highest budgets south of the border for its prison system, continues to have the highest recidivism rate in the country. Seventy per cent of those who spend time in prison offend again.

Criminologists say recidivism increases as the prison population grows. Conversely, as jurisdictions look for alternatives to building prisons, the crime rates don’t go up.

The Justice Policy Institute in the U.S. recently said this: “The total number of crimes reported to law enforcement have been consistently declining since 2007. This year saw an impressive six percent drop in violent crimes, accompanied by a 2.7 percent decrease in property crimes. According to analysis released today by the Justice Policy Institute (JPI), the steadily declining crime rate has occurred as states are incarcerating fewer people and spending less money on corrections.”

What does go up is taxes or, if not taxes, the proportion of same spent on health and welfare and other needs.

Before somebody responds otherwise, this does not mean incarceration should be eliminated as a form of protection and rehabilitation. But to spend billions on a system that has proven highly deficient and expect it to have a significant positive effect on our crime rate is nonsensical.

So when our MP, albeit with the best of intentions I’m sure, sends us mailouts telling us that “Just as Canadians have been clear in supporting our efforts to improve safety and security in our communities, so too have we been clear that this legislation would be a priority…” I wonder which Canadians she is talking to.

Lloyd, Rafe and Jim vs. ‘every nut with a keyboard’

(Above, Syd, Lloyd Roberston and Mel at 25th Webster Awards, Oct. 24, 1011.)

Lloyd Robertson, Rafe Mair and Jim Taylor are among our nation’s best-known journalists, and I got to meet and talk with all of them — and others, like Tony Parsons, Vicki Gabereau, Jack Knox and Bill Good — at this week’s 25^th annual Jack Webster Awards in Vancouver’s Hyatt Regency Hotel.

 Robertson, Mair and Taylor are alumni of what Taylor calls the unofficial Old Farts Club of journalists. In their 70s, they have no intentions of retiring any time soon.

 You won’t find them down at the seniors center playing bridge. They may have slowed by a step or two, but they’re still on the job, writing stories and dispensing advice to a new generation of journalists.

 “Would it kill them to laugh once in awhile?” the delightful Taylor complained of the youngsters emerging from J-school intense, humourless and determined to change the world.

 We were talking about changes in the industry, lamenting, in a sense, the loss of the old way of doing things, and conceding that the day is probably not far off when newspapers won’t be produced on newsprint at all any more, and will show up only on one of those new-fangled electronic tablets.

 Taylor is a legend in B.C. sports writing after decades at the Victoria Times Colonist, Vancouver Province and Vancouver Sun. He could be taking it easy now; instead, he’s busy on a promotional tour with a new book he’s co-authored with soccer star Bob Lenarduzzi.

 Mair, on the other hand, has made the transition from radio to print, churning out columns for several B.C. publications including The Daily News, gleefully shredding what he calls “this appalling provincial government.”

 Older but not a bit less opinionated than when I knew him as a lawyer and MLA here in Kamloops in the 1970s before he got into talk radio at the Coast, he’s as funny and salty as ever. Rafe doesn’t string very many words together without interjecting an expletive or two. 

Robertson is, without challenge, the very dean of Canadian journalism. He “retired” in September at the age of 77, leaving the CTV National News but carrying on as co-host of W5.

 Robertson provided the keynote address to a thousand people in the Regency Ballroom, drawing comparisons between traditional mainstream journalism and the blogosphere.

 Acknowledging the importance of technological change and trends in the news business, he nevertheless pointed out that network television provides a connection with the audience — via recognizable professional journalists — that online pretenders can’t match. 

His bottom-line message came in the reprise of a comment from another 70-something journalist, Morley Safer of CBS’ 60 Minutes, who compared citizen journalists to citizen surgeons.

 Safer’s full quote was actually this: “The blogosphere is no alternative, crammed as it is with ravings and manipulations of every nut with a keyboard. Good journalism is structured and structure means responsibility. I would trust citizen journalism as much as I would trust citizen surgery.”

 I’m with Safer and Robertson on that one. The way news is delivered may change, but I will trust proven journalists like Robertson, Mair and Taylor, and all the young professionals who will replace them, long before I’ll ever trust the gossips, innuendo artists and rumour mongers of the blogosphere.

What do the council candidates actually stand for?

In the second full week of the election campaign, there are few clues as to what Kamloops City council candidates might do if elected.

The hot-button issues of the Ajax mine and the Lorne Street parkade are the only ones that offer clear trends.

They’re all avoiding like the plague anything in the way of a position on the mine. We must wait for more information, they say. Chad Moats comes closest to actually taking a stand, proposing that city boundaries be extended to include the mine if it gets the green light.

That’s hardly revolutionary but at least he’s thinking ahead.

As for the parkade, as the writing on the wall became clear, first-time candidates became less cautious, and a clear “build it somewhere else” thread became evident.
Ken Christian stands out, almost alone among newcomers, in having supported construction of the parkade at the Lorne Street site.

That’s a pretty gutsy thing given the math. He put at risk close to 10,000 votes, which is the number of people who signed the counter petition. When people take the trouble to sign a petition, you can count them as committed voters.

That is a whopping constituency in an election that could generate one of the lowest turnouts in history. In 2008, a miserable 28 per cent of the electorate voted in what was characterized by media as a “lacklustre” campaign.

Yet, that campaign had three candidates running for an open mayor’s seat. With five candidates but no real competition this time, will the turnout be any better?

If not, and the turnout is only around 15,000 to 18,000, those 10,000 voters with an agenda will loom pretty large should they decide to take revenge.

But there will be other good issues to chew on in this election. City spending and the local economy, though not particularly sexy, are likely to rank high on voters’ lists of concerns.

Brendan Shaw identifies job creation as the big issue and says Kamloops needs more businesses. So, candidate Shaw, what are your ideas on what to do about it?

Incumbent John DeCicco wants “economic growth and orderly development for our city.”

Can’t argue with that — I doubt any candidates will be advocating for a stagnant economy and chaotic development.

Ayren Messmer would like a better working relationship with the Tk’emloops Indian Band, and Raymond Nyuli wants to “develop a more cohesively working council.”

So, please explain what’s not working with the status quo.

Marg Spina? The one-term councillor wants to hold the line on taxes. That’s an attractive position, but how do we deal with inflation?

Campaigns are for putting flesh on the bones of promises. Just as importantly, they’re for judging credentials. Christian, for example, has years of work on the school board. Moats led the anti-HST campaign. DeCicco and Spina have resumes that include years of both community and political experience.

What the candidates say they will do is only one yardstick in judging who’s worthy of support, and they’ll have plenty of opportunity to enlarge on their ideas.

We’re heading into forum season, and they face a heavy round of speaking engagements morning, noon and night, including the media-sponsored forum at TRU on Nov. 8.

With four candidates left, will mayors’ race get tighter?

Frank Stewart announces in front of city hall today that he's withdrawing from the mayors' race. (Daily News photo)

The withdrawal of Frank Stewart from the Kamloops mayors’ race today (Friday) adds yet another interesting wrinkle to the local civic election. Stewart said he withdrew because he wants to see Mayor Peter Milobar ousted.

“This type of rough-shod civic management has to stop,” he said. “We can’t afford a mayor like Milobar any more.”

Will it make any difference? Well, in The Daily News online survey, at this writing, Milobar is leading with 41 per cent. Dieter Dudy is second at 35 per cent. Frank Stewart, Gordon Chow and Brian Alexander are tied at a distant third with 8 per cent.

Stewart is urging his supporters to swing over to Dudy. For the sake of argument, let’s assume his 8 per cent did his bidding. That would put Dudy ahead with 43 per cent and heading for election as the surprise next mayor of Kamloops.

A full 8 per cent swing, of course, won’t happen. But what if some of the Chow and Alexander supporters saw a chance to unseat the incumbent and moved to Dudy? Or Chow and Alexander pulled a Stewart and threw their support to Dudy? The latter can’t technically happen because today was the deadline for getting your name off the ballot, but they could refuse to campaign.

You get the point — if Milobar is truly in a minority position, ie. he has less than 50 per cent support, this race could actually get quite interesting. And if Dudy were to pull off the upset, it would be stunning — a last-minute candidate with a last-minute campaign unseating an incumbent.

Numbers quoted above are taken from The Daily News online poll, which is meant for general information only and is not based on recognized statistical methods.

An explanation of that last-minute parkade referendum option

On the last day of the parkade debate, there was a final oddity in an epic that has had its share.

An explanation is in order as to the curious revelation at Tuesday’s City council meeting that a referendum in conjunction with the Nov. 19 civic election was, indeed, an option.

Even on that very day, council could have authorized a referendum for the 19^th of next month.

By then, of course, it was pretty much a moot point — there was no appetite in council chambers to continue fighting for a project that could make no headway against the tide of public opinion.

But it did raise the point that a council, and an administration, which had said it would be impossible to hold a referendum by civic-election day had it all wrong.

Indeed, at any point before or since Aug. 30, when council set Oct. 11 as the deadline for receiving counter petition forms, council could have gotten out from under the whole thing by calling for a referendum on Nov. 19.

With no fanfare or explanation, community and corporate affairs director Len Hrycan submitted a report to council Tuesday that simply gave a Nov. 19 referendum as an option in light of the successful counter petition. “The last date for this authorization (of a referendum) from Council is Oct. 18, 2011,” he stated in his report.

Was City Hall keeping River City residents in the dark the whole time?

The explanation I got from City Hall yesterday was that, no, it was simply a lack of due diligence.

The normal process for holding a referendum requires permission from the provincial government and quite a rigmarole that eats up a lot of time.

City staff assumed the rules and timeline are the same in the case of a successful counter petition but they are not. After the counter petition was underway, they figured they’d better check in with Victoria and discovered no ministry approval is required.

At no point, to my knowledge, was there any discussion of this in an open council meeting. Maybe council was informed in camera and didn’t want to muddy the waters.

It’s all of no consequence now except that one wonders why the rules for holding referenda were the subject of assumptions instead of careful homework.

Nevertheless, the parkade has now been removed from the public agenda and we can, thankfully, talk about other things.

Such as, for example, the new CBC radio studio that will open up here next spring. Former TV7 news anchor Rob Polson was in town yesterday gathering ideas for the content of the new Kamloops-based CBC morning radio show tentatively scheduled for launch early next April.

Polson now works for the Mother Corp in Vancouver and is doing some planning for the morning show. Word is the studio will be located in the downtown area — and there will be no remarks here about whether staff will find a place to park.

CBC is searching for a host, a producer, an associate producer and a reporter to work on the show. I, for one, will welcome a program based on our own city instead of one from Kelowna that pays occasional lip service.

Here’s hoping corporate cuts don’t kill the whole plan.

 

Smart Tax Alliance pulls an ‘oops’

Time has run out for getting ballot into the mail.

By MEL ROTHENBURGER/ The Armchair Mayor

Recruiting support is a big job in any political campaign. The HST referendum is no exception.

Traditional media advertising, social media, lawn signs, press releases, websites, phone banks and mail-outs are all part of the arsenals of those fighting on either side.

Such methods aren’t always used in the most sophisticated of ways, which can sometimes bring an “oops” embarrassment into the picture.

The pro-HST Smart Tax Alliance boasts 45 business-association members and has been campaigning hard both as an organization and via its members, such as the B.C. Chamber of Commerce.

Sometimes, things go wrong.

Like the thank-you letter it sent out to Stan Murray of Ashcroft.

“Thanks for taking the time to answer our questions about the harmonized sales tax on the phone recently,” said the letter, signed by Smart Tax Alliance co-chair Peter Leitch.

“I understand your concerns about how the HST applies to more goods and services than the old PST-GST. I just wanted to let you know about the recent rate change dropping the HST to 10 per cent.”

It goes on to say families will have more money in their pockets than under the old system, and that the economy is going to benefit. That’s why Leitch will vote for the HST, he said.

“I hope you will consider the same.”

Stan Murray passed away Nov. 30, 2005.

His widow, Glenys, was more than a little surprised to learn he had been talking to someone about the HST.

The letter doesn’t sit well with her. “It was an unpleasant shock, really,” she told me.

She says she had received a call from someone at the Smart Tax Alliance asking if she would answer a few questions.

“I said very nicely that I felt my vote was private and personal. They called back again; my answer was the same.”

Then came the letter. “This letter was very upsetting to me. I felt like I was being harassed and bullied. It is very clear that this government does not listen.”

After I exchanged a couple of calls and emails with Spire Public Relations, an outfit working for the Alliance, they concluded it was a case of mistaken identify. Working from the phone book, they’d called the number listed under Stan Murray, which Glenys has kept for security reasons.

Despite the fact Glenys’ voice sounds nothing like a man, the caller concluded it must be Stan on the phone, and put him down as someone in need of further persuasion.

The group has a number of form letters it sends out to those it calls. Unfortunately, whoever called not only was careless in identifying who answered the phone, but put a letter in the mail saying that person had answered some questions.

“It’s a mistake, and it’s unfortunate,” a spokesperson for the Alliance admitted.

Stan’s name and address have now been removed from the Smart Tax Alliance contact list.

So, while Glenys Murray prefers to keep her opinions on such matters to herself, she did offer a hint as to the effect of the Smart Tax Alliance’s attempt to win her over to the pro-HST side.

“You might guess how I voted,” she said, adding that she filled out her official form and sent it in rather quickly after her experience with the letter.

An unhappy choice for City council

By MEL ROTHENBURGER/ The Armchair Mayor

Some days it’s not much fun being a politician.

At its regular weekly gabfest Tuesday, City councilors had an unhappy choice: give the 46-member Kamloops Voters Society credibility as a force in civic politics, or come off as a status-quo-don’t-ask-us-to-change bunch of dotards who aren’t interested in new ideas.

Divided on budget-input issue, council turned it down with a split vote. (Daily News file photo)

They chose the latter — though as much by accident as by design — and struggled with how to explain why.

KVS president Chris Ortner, expected to be a candidate in the November civic election, followed up his earlier email to council with an appearance at the meeting.

He went a step further than simply asking for a better process as part of his plan for “participatory budgeting,” proposing that ratepayers actually have a direct say in how to allocate certain parts of the City’s budget.

“Important to note,” Ortner’s outline said, “that the citizens’ representatives identify, in consultation with City staff, what parts of the budget are of interest to them, and appropriate for them to play a part in.”

The direct involvement of citizens in budget decisions isn’t as radical as it sounds. Ortner pointed out that Guelph allows neighbourhood groups a say in spending for recreation programs, youth services and physical improvements to community facilities.

It’s actually a concept borrowed from American cities whose councils have exported limited budgetary authority to neighbourhood associations.

It answers the problem of such associations thriving when they’re fighting a cause but stagnating when the battle is over. Giving them some power — but not too much power — to allocate how tax monies are spent on their home turf keeps them vibrant.

Half of City council either didn’t get it, or didn’t like it. Jim Harker commented that council is elected every three years “and you feel that’s not good enough?”

John DeCicco thought things were fine the way they were, and Pat Wallace figured any changes to the process should be left for the new council to decide — a refrain that will be heard from the incumbents more and more often as the election approaches.

Mayor Peter Milobar was equally unreceptive.

He began by asking Ortner if he’d ever proposed changes to City spending at the annual budget meeting. When Ortner said no, the mayor dropped it, but the unspoken question seemed to be why he thought the process needed improvements if he didn’t even use what’s currently in place.

Then he telegraphed a perhaps-unintended message by asking administrator Randy Diehl if he thought the budget process needed fixing. In other words, council leaves it to staff to run the show.

Tina Lange, Denis Walsh, Nancy Bepple and Marg Spina were in favour of doing some research on the matter. As Lange said, “It’s our duty to do what we can to change things.”

But, the 4-4 tie put an end to it. Council might regard the KVS as a butinsky bunch of would-be civic revolutionaries, but an option would have been to apprehend the issue and undertake the City’s own dialogue with taxpayers on whether they even care about how the budget is done.

It’s the kind of middle ground John O’Fee might have used to rescue his colleagues if he’d still been at the table.

As it is now, consultation and accountability are pretty much guaranteed to be an issue come November.

Premier Clark is Yes side’s new best friend

By MEL ROTHENBURGER/ The Armchair Mayor

Who would have thought Premier Christy Clark would become the new best friend of the HST-referendum Yes side in Kamloops?

During a brief visit to town, she couldn’t resist trying to use much-needed improvements to Royal Inland Hospital as a bargaining chip in the upcoming provincewide vote on the controversial tax.

She didn’t say, “If you don’t vote for the HST, RIH isn’t going to get any money.”

Premier Christy Clark

No, Clark was more circumspect than that, talking on the one hand in an optimistic vein about finding the money for the new RIH master site plan, and on the other about the kicking the provincial budget will take if the HST is defeated. But the linkage was clear.

The average voter doesn’t like that kind of talk. Some take it as a veiled threat, or political bribery, and it has the opposite effect of what the premier wanted.

Healthcare costs are a challenge under any taxation system. Gordon Campbell understood that challenge, and sought ways — at least early in his tenure — of preventing it from swallowing an ever bigger chunk of the provincial budget.

In the jargon of the day, he wanted a healthcare budget that was “sustainable.”

Clark’s attempt to tie RIH and the HST together is par for the course in a campaign that has done little to add clarity to the impact of the tax.

The biggest source of confusion is the actual tax rate itself. Though Clark’s promised cut to 10 per cent won’t come into effect until 2014, the business-led Smart Tax Alliance is waging a campaign urging people to “vote no to higher taxes.”

Meanwhile, the premier and her cabinet ministers are assuring everyone the reduction is etched in stone.

“We want people to know if they vote to keep the HST that the reduction will take place by law,” Clark said last month in a government press release.

In the same press release, Attorney General Barry Penner stated, “It is now a requirement under federal legislation that B.C.’s combined federal and provincial HST rate drops to 10 per cent on July 1, 2014, but this will only happen if British Columbians vote ‘No’ in the HST referendum to going back to an overlapping 12 per cent GST and PST.”

(Well, of course the HST will only drop to 10 per cent if we vote to keep it, because otherwise there will be no HST to drop.)

But Fight HST has another version of the 10-per cent “law.”

Vancouver columnist Bill Tieleman, a Fight HST supporter, wrote a couple of weeks ago that the law really isn’t a law at all.

“. . . The ‘law’ is simply a federal Order-in-Council approved by the federal Conservative cabinet, not a vote by Parliament. And it could be just as easily rescinded with only a signature.”

He pointed out that there’s also a “law” that sets the date of May 14, 2013, for the provincial election, but that Clark has talked about changing it. And that the Liberals repealed their own “balanced budget” law in order to go back into debt.

So, while there’s a lot of noise about the impact of the referendum, finding some light is another story. And Clark doesn’t help when she ties the referendum into hospital upgrades.

Rural drivers are the absolute worst

Barnhartvale resident Pam Ketter comforts her halflinger horse called Fabio as he recovers in the barn from being struck by a car on Barnhartvale Road. (Keith Anderson photo/ The Daily News)

By MEL ROTHENBURGER/ The Amrchair Mayor

As bad as the drivers are in town, they’re even worse — much worse — in rural areas.

This week’s story about the horse and rider getting clipped by an automobile on Barnhartvale Road proved it once again. And it brought back memories of the Barnhartvale woman who died years ago when a passing vehicle spooked her horse and threw her off.

I drove that road twice a day for years; now I drive Westsyde Road and nothing’s different. It’s not that some drivers on rural roads are careless, inattentive and dangerous — it’s that most of them are.

They’re emboldened by the light traffic on such roads, and by the fact there’s little to no policing. So they treat them like freeways instead of the narrow, winding roads they are.

But they aren’t the only ones who use them. People walk, run, cycle and ride horses on them, and most drivers don’t give them the berth that’s needed when they pass.

It’s a fact that rural roads, with much less traffic than urban roads, experience the highest number of accidents. And the number one cause of those accidents is driver error.

While only about 20 per cent of the population lives in rural areas, about 60 per cent of highway deaths happen there.

Horses and automobiles don’t get along. Drivers fail to understand that horses “spook” quite easily in unfamiliar surroundings, especially when a loud machine looms up toward them or beside them. They can rear, buck or simply hop sideways with disastrous consequences.

It isn’t just the horse and rider who are in danger; the collision can send the vehicle out of control, resulting in a fatal wreck.

Of course, humans and horses aren’t the only victims of stupid driving on rural roads. The slaughter of deer continues unabated through all seasons. They jump out from the side of the road in front of traffic without warning, and the result isn’t pretty — the animal often suffers in pain for hours, and the damage to the car or truck can be substantial.

The defense for drivers is to proceed with caution, yet I’m passed at high speed by rural dwellers every single day even in the areas they should know are favorite deer crossings.

Deer are relatively small animals; at least, small in comparison to moose and cows. There aren’t a lot of moose along rural roads in our area, but there are plenty of cows. It is, after all, cattle country.

And cattle country comes with slow-moving equipment. Tearing around a corner and running into a hay baler is not going to end well for the motorist.

When animals aren’t involved, rural drivers manage to get into trouble all by themselves, smashing into trees and telephone poles or simply driving over steep embankments and into rivers.

They do this not just because they drive too fast but because they’re more likely to drive drunk and careless. According to those who study such things, people use their seatbelts less often when driving in the country than when in the city.

The answers for rural driving are simple: drive carefully within the limit, turn down the stereo, and be alert. But such advice is wasted breath.

Let’s say goodbye to the RIH trees

RIH trees will be replaced with a building that will look something like this. (Image from RIH Master Plan)

Say so long to the RIH trees.

A dozen years ago, 12-year-old Emily Ferguson led a rebellion against a bureaucracy that wanted to cut down the grand old elm and ash trees in front of the hospital.

She won. Today, she wouldn’t.

The RIH master plan this week not only reveals the fate of the trees, but is revealing for its total lack of consideration for them. Nowhere in the plan can I find any acknowledgement that removal of the trees was or is an issue.

In fact, it mentions the word “trees” only in passing. The area fronting Columbia Street is, simply, “green space” that is available for development.

“One of the most critical elements of the Master Plan is the utilization of the green space along Columbia Avenue,” it says. (Would it be too much to ask for IHA to get the name of the street right?)

A new parkade-clinical structure will “help to establish a strong relationship” between Columbia and RIH “by providing a landscaped front plaza including decorative paving, trees and water features.”

Elsewhere in the report, the new building is referred to as “the Columbia Street Parkade and Services Building.”

There are lots of reasons this plan will go ahead, and the trees lost.

One is that there is no political will to save them. In 1999, the prospect of losing the trees became an election issue as Emily Ferguson’s battle gained national attention. Though municipal politicians had no authority in the matter — just as they have no technical authority now — their vocal opposition to the hospital’s plans had a big influence on the outcome.

You won’t find that opposition this time around. They were well primed at closed-door meetings with IHA brass to extol the virtues of the plan.

Secondly, the IHA didn’t exist in 1999. Enough said.

Thirdly, this is a very different concept than the traditional ugly parkade contemplated back at the turn of the century. It comes complete with very nice looking artist’s renderings that show glass and plants and pleasant surroundings.

“Features of this building that relate to site access for pedestrians include a glazed lobby with direct access to a vertical lift that connects, via elevated bridge link, directly to the new main Concourse on Level 2, including the Ambulatory/ Outpatient programs.”

Ironically, the mess created by the Interior Health Authority makes it harder for the public to object. People are so desperate for improvements to health care, so anxious for RIH to be updated, that they feel there’s no option.

As Mayor Peter Milobar, clearly not a tree guy, remarked, “There is always trade-offs in life. Are we trying to improve health care or what?”

Oh, and one more. The trees are 12 years older. They were old in 1999; today it won’t be difficult to find an arborist to say they’re past their prime and will soon pose a danger to public safety.

Really, when it comes down to it, it’s hard to argue that a couple of dozen trees are more important than much-needed upgrades to a hospital that was built in the wrong place.

In other words, that was then, this is now. Every tree has its day; their time has, unfortunately, come.

Quite honestly, if the decision had been mine, it probably would have been the same.