Naheed Nenshi Vs. Newmarket Council

This week's news that Calgary Mayor, Naheed Nenshi being selected as "World's Best Mayor" is being attributed to the way he uses Twitter.  With 218,000 followers and over 35,000 tweets to his name, Nenshi has done a tremendous job keeping Calgary taxpayers engaged in that city's municipal government. 

Last term on Newmarket Council, Twitter played a tremendous role in local politics.  And thank goodness because Twitter was used by us "ordinary people" to shame our politicians on certain gruesome-twosome initiatives (the Newmarket Soccer Club bail out comes to readily to mind). 

This term on Council, Naheed Nenshi's motto (Tweet, Tweet, Tweet) is being ignored by the majority of Newmarket Council.  Other than the Mayor, Regional Councillor, and the Ward 7 Councillor (all of whom are 100X more likely to tweet about a lost puppy than they are to tweet about any real political issue), Twitter is rarely used by the majority of our Council. 

Here is a summary of how our Council uses Twitter:

Ward 2 Dave Kerwin - Has his Twitter on "private" setting.  (I guess it is none our business to know how he is representing us).
Ward 5 Joe Sponga - Has not posted since August 10, 2014 (No posts this term)
Ward 6 Kelly Broome Plumley - Has not posted since September 7, 2014 (prior to joining Council)
Ward 4 Tom Hempen - Has not posted since October 21, 2014 (No posts this term)
Ward 3 Jane Twinney - Has not posted since January 27th. (She has posted two times in 2015)
Ward 1 Tom Vegh - Last posted 4 days ago.  (6 posts in 2015)

Don't attribute these Councillors' lack of posting to apathy.  This is a strategic direction from these council members meaning to keep all of us in the dark about what is going on in our town. 

Lord knows that the local paper won't write about local politics.  Residents who want to know how our tax dollars are being spent are finding extremely few sources for information.   

I have said it before, these people work for us.  We are their boss.  Why do we tolerate our employees refusing to talk to us about their progress at work?  Or worse still, actually "blocking" us from even seeing what they have doing? 

Tony Van Bynen is going to retire soon and at that point someone is going to suggest naming something after him (so we'll remember him after he's gone).  Given his penchant for keeping us in the dark on local issues, I have a few suggestions:

Things we can re-name to honour the legacy of Tony Van Bynen

1. a dark closet
2. the dark side of the moon
3. a burnt out light bulb
4. a closed door meeting room
5. a paper shredder

Let me know if you have any other suggestions.