Once again, Saint John is in the news.
Once again, it’s because our loudmouth Mayor is refusing to accept there is anything wrong (with anything) in the city.
This time, he is blaming the Telegraph-Journal for negative coverage. While I won’t deny that he is getting negative coverage, I do disagree with the reason for it. It is not due to a grudge at the newspaper – it’s because Ivan Court is doing a poor job.
This is a Mayor who thinks it’s better to build parking lots instead of buildings, gives city staff raises for no reason, and wants to spend massive amounts of money on a new police complex (while refusing to admit the city’s pension plan is hemorrhaging taxpayers money). Yeah, it’s the newspapers fault all right…
Here is a clip from the story:
In Monday night’s council meeting, Court remarked that the Telegraph-Journal has been increasingly negative in its coverage of him and city hall staff over the last couple of years, so he wants to fight back.
The mayor told councillors the next Telegraph-Journal employee he’ll speak to will be publisher Jamie Irving, and he’ll do it in a broadcast debate at a media outlet not owned by the powerful Irving family.
Until then, he’s refusing all interview requests from the paper — and banning it from his office.
“As of today, I’ve asked my staff to cancel the Telegraph-Journal. It’s my first budget cut,” he said. “It will save the citizens of Saint John, from my office, $190.”
The Telegraph-Journal is owned by Brunswick News Inc., which is owned by the Irvings. The paper is distributed provincewide, but its city section is specifically focused on Saint John and the counties of southern New Brunswick.
The worst part about this is the fact that he will go to such lengths to save $190, yet he does nothing when the city’s Pension Plan costs us millions of dollars – he refuses to admit that anything is wrong.
My favorite part of the article is the quotes from the Telegraph-Journal’s Editor Shawna Richer:
“The problem is not with the newspaper. The problem is with the culture of inefficiency and sometimes questionable leadership at city hall. And that’s something that our newspaper, newspapers everywhere, cover,” Richer told the CBC on Tuesday.
“This isn’t personal,” she said.
“This is, you know, our job is to advocate for the people … for the taxpayers and their residents. And any good newspaper would take exactly the same position,” she said.
Once again, the Mayor makes us all look bad, and we will be left paying (literally) for his screw-ups for some time to come.
