Here we are in the doldrums of the pre-federal election period where presumably candidates have some flex in their schedules. Won’t last long, but perhaps we should take advantage of it.

Would you be prepared to spend a day with the candidates for Charlottetown? Not an hour-long soundbite-driven traditional all candidates meeting where Leo Broderick asks embarrassing questions about social housing and the head of the Chamber of Commerce asks embarrassing questions about payroll taxes, but rather an opportunity, with a skilled facilitator, to engage in real dialogue for an entire day.

I have no idea whether this would work. But it seems to me that if we’re prepared to outsource decision making to one of the candidates, we should be prepared to take a day out of our lives to do a thorough evaluation of their ideas and approaches.

Think of it as a day-long group job interview.

Charlottetown City Councillor Bruce Garrity, in a uncommonly honest post here (uncommonly honest for a politician, not for Bruce; Bruce is all about uncommon honesty), wrote the following in response to my post about City Council technology spending motions:

I questioned the $70,000+ for the Complaint Tracking System prior to the vote and after some discussion I thought , OK, guess you guys know this issue better than me so i voted for it. The next day I emailed all Council to ask that we give it a sober second thought and not approve the spending. I have not received any replies on this point… I was wrong to vote yes— actually I think it’s really out of line to spend $70,000 when we are $70 million in debt!

Emphasis is mine.

I have no idea whether a Complaint Tracking System is a good idea for Charlottetown or not, mostly because I don’t know what a Complaint Tracking System is, and I don’t know who’s complaining about what and how often.

But I’m afraid that Bruce’s suggestion that he voted because he trusted his technology staff confirms something I’ve always assumed: politicians are often in thrall of their technology advisers.

It’s completely understandable, of course. Think about it: you’re a middle-aged responsible citizen who has sidled up to the democracy bar to represent your neighbourhood on Council. You’re a smart person: you have a career and a family, and you can do the New York Times crossword puzzle.

A motion comes to the floor, with an explanation like “we’ve got to upgrade the hard drive controllers in our server farm so that we can protect ourselves from DOS attacks that may render the tax system unusable.” Or “we’ve already invested in a web-based infrastructure for tax payments; this additional expenditure in GIS infrastructure will streamline and enhance that investment.” Or “our vendor indicates that we need to upgrade to version 7.x because they’re no longer releasing security upgrades to legacy systems.”

Huh?

You have two choices at this point: you can ask hard questions, which will require a lot of explanation (from people who probably aren’t all that good at explaining things), will require you to look like an idiot (“what’s a hard drive?”) and will slow down the meeting. Or you can say, as Bruce did, “guess you guys know this issue better than me” and agree to proceed.

I’d hazard a guess that in 95% of situations in 95% of cities, towns and villages, 95% of councillors will do the same.

I don’t mean to say that cities shouldn’t spend on technology. Nor do city councillors need to be Linux kernel hackers to properly do their jobs. But we elect our councillors to represent our interests, to act responsibly, and, I assume, to know the substance of what it is they’re approving when they agree to spend our money.

There’s a reason we don’t simply allow technology staff to spend money without oversight: while they may be technical experts, and skilled at designing technology solutions, they’re not responsible for overseeing the needs of the community as a whole. That’s why we have councillors.

I think we community of technologists bear some of the responsibility for this, for we are the high priests of the religion that we are asking councillors to unthinkingly adopt.

How can we help them do their jobs more responsibly?

The water cooler on the third floor has two spigots, one is white and one is black. My initial assumption would be that the white spigot dispenses pure, clean water, and the black spigot dispenses fetid sewer-water. Assuming that is not the case, I remain at a loss.

A year ago today, Catherine and Oliver and I were wandering around Bilbao, Spain, and The Old Man of the Mountain in New Hampshire fell off the mountain.

Eddie’s Lunch, which played a starring role in Oliver’s uterine life and has been mentioned in these pages more times than I can recall, left our radar for a year. A combination of things led to this, mostly that our city orientation shifted north (note, I use that in the strange Charlottetown use of the world; in the rest of the world you can read “south”) when I moved my office out of the house.

On Friday night, though, Catherine and Oliver were still in the thick of colds, and I wanted to eat out, so I took my bike on a long swing through Victoria Park, down Pownall and Rochford to Water, along Water to Prince and up Prince to the corner of King, where Eddie’s sits.

Calling it Eddie’s Lunch is Wrong, of course, as it hasn’t been Eddie’s Lunch for a long time: it was Viva’s for a while, then it was Viva’s in sign only, and then it went unnamed for a while. Now it’s the Marina Grill (or is it MarinaGrill, with no space?).

And it’s fantastic. In one fell swoop the “who serves the best chicken shawarma in town?” question has been rendered moot: you can get it there. Unable to believe that Friday night’s chicken shawarma was so good, I forced Catherine and Oliver to accompany me back for dinner tonight. It was that good.

More interestingly, the Lebanese rice has reached heights it’s never reached for me: it’s tasty, crunchy, warm and wonderful. And the shawarma comes with a nice side-salad, with a very nice Italian dressing to boot.

Catherine and Oliver shared the F.R.T.H., which is a combination platter of fatire, tabouli, rice, amd hummous. Catherine said it was the best tabouli she’s ever had.

If life has led you away from Eddie’s of late, it’s time to go back. You’ll see us there.

Here are the technology-related expenditure motions at the April City of Charlottetown Council meeting:

Moved by Councillor Stu MacFadyen; Seconded by Councillor Kim Devine:

That the City of Charlottetown enter into a contract with ESRI Canada to provide software, installation and support associated with the Complaint Tracking Project in the amount of $51,295.00 plus taxes. Further that this purchase will be expensed out of the 2004 Operational Budget within the Smart Communities Account.

Moved by Councillor Stu MacFadyen; Seconded by Councillor Kim Devine:

That the City of Charlottetown accept the quotation of $19,872.00 plus taxes from Xwave to purchase twelve handheld computers and software associated with the Complaint Tracking Project. Further that this purchase will be expensed out of the 2004 Operational Budget within the Smart Communities Account.

Moved by Councillor Stu MacFadyen; Seconded by Councillor Ken Gillis:

That the City of Charlottetown agrees to enter into a four year lease purchase arrangement with DeltaWare Systems Inc to provide the Oracle 11i Upgrade and hosting services as per the following cost schedule:

• 2004 $35,072.50
• 2005 $35,072.50
• 2006 $35,072.50
• 2007 $15,000.00

All of the motions carried unanimously.

Wily brother Mike spotted the following. Here’s the Canadian logo:

And here’s the U.S. logo:

For some reason, they drop “The” in Canada.

I answered a political poll for the first time today; I’d been called before, but this was the first time I had the patience to sit through the ten minute grilling. It wasn’t clear who was doing the polling, but whoever it was, they were obviously looking to gauge public opinion on the Tory government here on the Island, especially on matters of public trust. There were a lot of questions like “on a scale of 1 to 5, how would you rate your trust for the following: Robert Ghiz, Pat Binns, Mike Currie, Mitch Murphy?” and “how would you rate the Government’s handling of industrial policy and job creation?”

Obviously the answers to a poll like this could be used by the government to defend itself, or by the opposition to find weakness.

The most interesting aspect of the poll was when I answered “Green Party” to “which party would you most likely support in a federal election?” As a result, Green Party had to be added by the computer to the list of eligible parties for every other question in the poll. I’m sorry now I didn’t say “particle beam weapon party” because that would have been kind of fun to hear over and over.

The CBC reports today:

The Queen Elizabeth Hospital needs up to $22 million in repairs according to a report tabled in the P.E.I. legislature on Friday. It says the hospital is in critical need of improvement, that it is outdated, and unable to deliver core services according to national standards… Doctors who work at the hospital conducted the study.

Later in the same story comes Health Minister Chester Gillan’s response:

Health minister Chester Gillan said the report doesn’t go far enough. He said Friday that his department will try to find out exactly what work needs to done.

“Our next step is to put a functional committee together to take a look at how are we going to do this.”

Anyone with any experience at all with bureacracy, especially the extra-special variety of health bureacracy, knows that “put a functional committee together” means “we’re going to have lots of pointless meetings for three years before we do anything.”

Frankly, I fully prepared to take the word of the doctors at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital about what needs to be done; if you need to raise my taxes to do the work, go ahead. Just do it, and stop the obfuscating.

In 1976 I was 10 years old. Here’s the prime time schedule for the 1976 television season. It makes me feel vaguely ill to have lived through that.

For comparison, here are the prime time schedules in 1986, when I was 20, and in 1996, when I was 30.

The first “appointment viewing” I can remember was Wonder Woman, on Friday nights in the 70s, and Hill Street Blues, on Thursday nights in the 80s. And of course the endless reruns of WKRP that we watched every night at supper, twice (once of CKCO Kitchener and then 1/2 hour later on CFTO Toronto).

I missed most of the television between 1986 and 1992 because I didn’t have a TV where I was living. From 1992 to 1998 I watched a lot of CTV and CBC because we had a TV, but no cable. When we got cable in 1998 (they finally agreed to string the wire up 200 feet from the corner), there was no looking back.