Editor:
As a White Rock resident, I see that the city has decided on its own to invest some of my tax dollars into a ‘Rumours and Misperceptions’ web page that they claim will address inaccurate information circulating within the community (City asks public to report rumours, June 23).
So far, this web page has only dealt with three issues, all of them related to the city’s purchase and operation of the water utility. None of these three issues are actually ‘rumours or statements of misinformation,’ but instead they appear to be matters that the city has hand-picked and described as ‘rumours’ in order to use social media as an opportunity to restate their position.
There is however, an obvious rumour and misperception about the water utility that Mayor Wayne Baldwin has been spouting publicly in council chambers and personally on his blog. Baldwin has stated and continues to state that “White Rock’s water exceeds the Canadian drinking water standard in all respects.”
Any reasonably informed citizen who is still relying on White Rock water knows that this is not a fact. If it were a fact, then why would it be necessary for the city to spend $14.5 million on an arsenic and manganese treatment plant to try and get the water to an acceptable standard ($11.8m in grants for city water, March 22)?
Perhaps the city’s ‘fact checker’ will take action to correct this misinformation and set the record straight.
If not, then we’ll all know that the city’s ‘Rumours and Misperceptions’ web page is exactly what we thought it was – pure spin – and nothing more than that.
Barry Miller, White Rock
