Boy, Penticton misses Mayor Dan Ashton.

Last week, the Penticton Herald ran a piece looking at how the current council, led by Mayor Andrew Jakubeit, was giving back the gains made during the city’s core review from a few years ago. More expensive staff, more expensive and dumb ideas, you get the picture.

Well, His Worship didn’t love that. In a long rant in the Herald, Jakubeit makes the inane claim that he couldn’t possibly understand the will of his electorate without a community engagement staff member to help him. This is a most astonishing statement from a mayor, one of the people Penticton taxpayers elect specifically to represent their views at city hall.

Why have elected officials at all, if they are so unable to discern and represent the public’s view?

Perhaps the mayor should cut his salary in half and dedicate the savings to the community engagement manager he seems to so desperately need.