LETTER: Reader takes swing at council, compares meetings to '16-inning baseball game'

BarrieToday welcomes letters to the editor at [email protected]. Please include your daytime phone number and address (for verification of authorship, not publication). The following letter is from former Barrie resident Ken Robertson, who is temporarily living in Innisfil but still tunes in to watch city council. 
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Watching Barrie city council lately is painful, similar to a 16-inning baseball game that goes on and on and is fuelled by individual agendas that have little or no effect on the vast majority of Barrie residents.

COVID-19 has devastated the financial and mental well-being of the thousands of families dealing with job loss and stay-at-home orders and their situation is totally ignored by this council.

If I am one of those families and tune into a council meeting looking for some good news, all I hear is a lot of time wasted on neon signs and dog breeders followed up by an outburst by a councillor at the end that reminded me of a grand finale at a fireworks display.

This particular meeting took over three hours and I can assure you there was nothing there to ease the financial ills of Barrie residents (unless you own a business) and definitely nothing to help your mental well-being.

In order to know how someone feels, you have to walk a mile in their shoes, I wonder how many councillors have actually felt the same pain that the majority of their constituents have endured during this pandemic. My guess, by their behaviour at council meetings, is none.

Ken Robertson
Innisfil
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