long boring read.

where we live, there are 3 lakes. they’re kinda lined up, probably were one large lake millions of years ago, but that’s irrelevant. they’re tourist traps. thousands of people go to these lakes for camping, fishing, boating, water park playground, and various other activities.

it’s been planned for years (before I was born) that someday, a road would be built connecting these three lakes. the benefit would be less holiday traffic on the other main roads.

Now, the Alberta Government is quite lazy... but it did start in on this project about a decade ago. it connected the 2 southern lakes. It also commissioned another (gravel) road up at the Northern lake and had it connect to a pre-existing highway. meaning, if you want to get from the southern most lake, to the northern most lake, you have to take quite a large jog out of your way (3 different highways)

the plan was, when they finally get off their asses, the two roads would be connected, forming one almost perfectly straight, paved, road to help with the tourist traffic.

the plan was quite extensive, including thousands of dollars worth of surveying, and the purchase of land rights for this new road. I do not know the exact dollar amount for what has already been spent on this project, but it’s in the hundreds of thousands.

This year, finally, it will be finished..... but not there.

It will not be built where the money was spent in surveying.

It will not be built where the roadways are already bought and paid for.

worse yet, it will be built at a ridiculous angle, from the highway, across perfectly good farm land, and connect to that little gravel road that’s already attached to the same highway. wtf?

of course it does...there’s a major Gas Plant on that proposed road.

and you’d think, the people directly effected by this change would have some say in it. you know, “the right to govern is vested in the citizens” and all that.

no.

I mean, there was a council meeting... but nobody was told about it.
There was no advertising about this meeting. you’d think, a news paper posting, or something! like “hey, guess what!”
god knows our news paper journalist is nosey enough >__>’

the only people who who received ‘invites’ ( it was an open-to-anybody meeting) where the people who’s properties were directly adjacent to the road. Even though, the people affected were far more wide spread.
like us. we are one block away from the original proposed road way. we can see it. We didn’t get a notice. my uncle, who lives in Fort Mac, owns the property between us and the road. he got an invite.
600 km away, and he’s more effected than we are.
in fact, the only reason we found out about it, is cause he called to ask if we were going.

the meeting was held on a week day, when most people who would object to it were working. My dad actually had to take a day off work to go.

I won’t get into the discussions at the meeting, but in the end, the Alberta Government said “Look, it doesn’t matter what you say, this is what we're doing.”

The reason:
The Gas Plant pays more taxes than you do.

......Plutocracy!






on a side note...
Guess who’s not getting re-elected! 8D