A Westlock County man is taking it upon himself to survey his fellow residents to gauge their satisfaction with county council.
David Woynorowski has written several Letters to the Editor outlining what he sees as deficiencies in the way the county operates and how council makes its decisions.
Now he’s asking county residents to make their voices heard by filling out his survey, which can be found at https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/SD5P3QQ. It consists of 10 questions and takes no longer than a couple minutes to complete. Woynorowski was born and raised in the area and has a business degree from the University of Alberta.
He spent five years accounting with a major firm and five years doing corporate taxes for the Canada Revenue Agency. He also has 25 years under his belt in the field of economic development with the federal government. He was director general of Alberta operations and did extensive work with provincial and municipal governments. He also spent the last six years as a management consultant.
He is now semi-retired and has a small organic farming operation north of Westlock.
“At the outset, I simply wanted to understand what numbers were behind the budget and how our tax dollars were being spent effectively and efficiently ... it’s simply the lack of information, the lack of detail that doesn’t allow a person to make an informed decision as to if they are spending our dollars well.
“They’re giving us the bare basics and when I say bare basics I can point to several other counties and the Town of Westlock that provide a much greater disclosure and degree of information, which allows residents to make up their own mind as to if they understand how their tax dollars are spent or not.”
When he wasn’t satisfied with the information he was getting, Woynorowski said he approached his councillor, the reeve and CAO.
“There seems to be a tendency to avoid answering questions, there seems to be a tendency to do a lot of stuff in-camera and there seems to be a tendency to use the Freedom of Information Act to shelter information that shouldn’t be sheltered.”
The survey was made available to council and administration before it was published to the web, but Woynorowski received no input from the county, he said.
Reeve Lou Hall and CAO Leo Ludwig were both asked, but declined to comment on the survey.
Woynorowski said he has no intention of running for council himself and doesn’t believe the extra scrutiny he is putting on county council at this time will discourage others from running for office later.
“There will always be room for candidates who want to give back to their community and make decisions for the benefit of the entire county and engage constituents in a meaningful way,” he said, adding he also expects candidates to conduct business in an open and transparent manner, provide information and access to public documents and to be accountable for the decisions made.
“I want to know how my tax dollars are being spent. I think other county residents would also like to know how their tax dollars are being spent. The discussion I’m trying to bring other ratepayers into is to simply bring to the surface a better understanding of how our dollars are being spent.”
Whether or not the survey will provide a representative sample that is accurate is a question that lingers though.
“I would really, really encourage people to complete the survey. That would be the best way to understand and share that understanding with the broader ratepayer community ... If the survey comes back positive, I’ll be the first to pat these guys on the back and if it comes back indicating areas of improvement I’d like to think that they would take that under consideration.”
