Rhino Ramblings - Broadcast Of Armageddon Pre-Empted Due To Technical Difficulties

By Robert Thomas Opinion/Commentary

It was said to be a meeting that was the beginning of the end or was it the end of the beginning

But whatever way you look at it it was a meeting where the party was ending.

A meeting of Biblical proportions, a veritable Armageddon, for the City of Moose Jaw.

All broadcast live on Shaw Cable 10 and the City’s livestream that is until there were major technical difficulties shutting the whole event down.

A veritable Armageddonus Interuptus on a gigantic scale.

I suppose it can be said you can’t wish bad news away but sometimes you get lucky and people don’t hear it.

And that in a nutshell is what happened on Monday afternoon.

The audio for Council was gone - likely fallen into a crater masking itself as a pothole on the 900 block of 5th Avenue NW.

Yes it must have been something of Biblical - Christian Bible’s book of Revelations - proportion as within five minutes of the meeting’s start my phone started to ring like I needed a multi-line switchboard.

Five calls of complaint - all within three minutes.

“Oh how convenient,” the first caller said cynically not believing it was all coincidental.

“Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha,” was all he could reply.

And it went on and on.

“You know as well as I do there is not such a thing known as coincidence in politics,” one caller told me.

Going on to call the explanation I gave as “a bunch of hooey.”

What hooey is I will never likely guess as I heard the word is subjective.

I suppose in the minds of the young people on the Internet this is the City of Moose Jaw’s “Hauk Tuah” moment and the good people of Moose Jaw contacting me aren’t about to swallow it.

So were the things missed in the pre-emption of Shaw and the City’s feed all that bad?

Well there were several highlights or serious issues coming front row center in Council today.

The Moose Jaw Police Service were set to ask Council to transfer capital funds left over from renovations to cover their $724,192 deficit the police ran in 2023.

An ugly financial sticking point and one that isn’t going to go away for a force with a new collective agreement and a lot of six figure salaries.

Next year things will be worse to cover this shortfall for property taxpayers is my opinion.

Also on the agenda were the public accounts where Administration was about to announce the City was running a deficit.

How Council voted, the discussion and what the options verbalized to fix it were not heard by hordes of Council watchers.

Instead what most avid Council watchers saw was a screen which I’m guessing sort of announced Armageddon was here.

Or at least it was The End of the Public Accounts presentation.

Either way I did see the irony.

Screenshot of what most people saw for several minutes on the City’s livestream as well as Shaw Cable 10

Also in the public accounts was the remuneration paid to Council and the salaries paid to members of the MJPS, Moose Jaw Fire Department and other City employees.

And yes there was more than a few people with six figure salaries in the lists.

Also at Council on Monday night was a petition presented by the Good Neighbours Group (GNG) about holding a special meeting about the proposed new location for Souls Harbour Rescue Mission.

A petition Administration was recommending as insufficient to force a public meeting on the controversial issue that is dividing up certain sectors in the community.

It’s a veritable election year land mine waiting for someone in Council to state the wrong way - especially on television.

As you can see Monday afternoon had a massive agenda most who watch will miss out on.

I’m happy though we did miss some of the repetitive and time consuming speeches many on Council are giving right now on every issue.

Is it vanity?

No.

They’re trying to raise their profile as they gear up to run for re-election or aspire for higher office.

Name recognition is the big thing.

I do sort of wonder though if they knew about the technical glitch.

Did they continue to play it up for the camera? Or if they knew about the lack of audio did they tone it down?

Now do I think this is any more than a technical glitch?

No I don’t.

But in Moose Jaw politics it doesn’t always matter what the truth may or may not be.

By tomorrow morning coffee row will already have made up their minds. It doesn’t really matter if they broadcast it later.

They may have publicly dodged broadcasting Armageddon but from what I could see in their own roundabout way they sort of announced…

THE END.