A Murray Mandryk article very rarely has one sitting on the fence after reading it.
His article in the local rural newspapers around the September 6 date was, in my mind, no exception.
I took strong offence to his suggestion that local governments are working from outdated thinking. If he actually got involved locally with a rural RM he might be quite surprised at the quality and proficiency of some RM’s, particularly a lot of the RM administrators.
It is also rather silly of him to make an example of the RM of McKillop insinuating that this is the norm of all Saskatchewan RM’s. I don’t even want to start bringing up examples of fraudulent action of the so-called “better trained” city councillors.
I believe the concern that Mr. Mandryk may have is that, for the most part, the rural councillors are doing a better job than their city counterparts.
I believe that fundamentally the reason for this is that these rural councillors, due to limited resources, have to rely on common sense. Common sense goes a long way versus today’s politically-correct training he is suggesting.
Then there is the human element. Although, at times, rural councillors do not agree with each other, they are living in the same environment, experiencing the same problems, and therefore have a better understanding of the situation in their RM and in particular, their zone.
Clearly, Mr. Mandryk, you do not understand life in rural Saskatchewan and I feel you need to do much more research before writing such an article as you have last week.
