Editor:
Re: School District 79 trustees approving a deficit budget
I have read, even in an editorial, that the school board must file a balanced budget.
There is fear and expectation that a failure will result in the firing of the board and replacement by an appointee.
That was done once, decades ago. The appointee, as I recall, worked to a budget not all that different to the one that cited for the dismissals.
What I find shameful is that our community did not challenge that minister for violating our sovereign district right.
In our Westminster model of democracy, an elected member can only be removed by that member’s electoral district’s electorate.
Our common laws hold sacred elected representatives. Only a trial, conviction and incarceration for a crime keeps one from elected duties.
If the School Act demands a balanced budget, it is only correct that the minister fund the local trustees with the reasonable funds that are requisitioned. Recall that a past minister removed the taxation powers from our local elected trustees.
There must be negotiating room left within the minister’s care to accommodate all the local needs across the province.
If that is not the case, then it is the criminal negligence or a deliberate ideological intention of the minister to shortchange our children’s educational needs.
I see it as a tax theft from our collective B.C. communities’ needs. A theft that appears to be applied to corporation’s profits, exchanged for nothing to our population’s benefit. Why is not the minister in jail?
Dee Shoolingin
Duncan
