Dear Richard Rolke, we really do thank you for your efforts in bringing our case to the taxpayers' notice.
You now know first hand what we have put up with. That is the city's refusal to offer any assistance or response until we decided to seek relief at the court level with mediation, and they obviously continue to exhibit the same attitude by not speaking to the paper, and instead referred you to an insurance employee
To clarify, the whole point of our complaint is the city was high-handed, did not offer any solution or accept any responsibility and tried to intimidate us with a lawyer — a further waste of tax dollars.
Through no fault of our own, we ended still paying a further $1,700 when the fault and cause of the spill was due to a city maintenance dysfunction.
Finally, it still took more than a year to get any acknowledgment from the city as to their responsibility in the matter when they finally made a payment towards our additional costs.
As a consultant has warned, this could happen again and to other taxpayers unless the city upgrades its maintenance practices because we were hooked again in exactly the same way which was again approved by the city. In short, had we not stood up to them, the city would have completely ignored us in terms of their responsibility to assist or to examine their own part in the spill.
So the last word from the insurance employee, who was not involved in any stage of this crisis with us, leaves the matter with the wrong impression — that the city dealt with the matter in a timely manner.
Thanks for your efforts, Richard. The city's refusal to respond even to our local newspaper makes our case.
It shows an arrogance that does not have a place in the function of elected council people, including the mayor or the administration that taxpayer dollars pay for.
Taxpayers should not be treated with such utter disrespect
Tony and Kay Stamboulieh
Vernon