Viewers watching the Nov. 10 Revelstoke City Council meeting on RCTV may have been able to hear the barely perceptible groan coming from some staff members in attendance after council proceeded to publicly fumble the Clearview Heights Sewer Extension project, once again hanging staff members out to dry even though they were not at fault.

This council inherited the controversies associated with the project, and has made strides to come up with solutions by working with the neighbourhood to nominate designated representatives in order to keep communications open with the city.

For some reason, this work seemed to have been forgotten by some, dragging council into a drawn-out discussion that, quite frankly, made them look disorganized and perhaps forgetful.

Not everyone at the table had lost the plot. So, what’s one councillor to do when another councillor has obviously not done their homework and are not up to speed? Call a spade a spade by calling them out.

Outright disagreements at the council table have been few and far between. This aversion to conflict is certainly costing us time, which, as they say, is money.

To their credit, many councillors are very responsive to individual community concerns, often going out in person to talk to residents over small concerns.

To their detriment, this council often gets derailed when faced with one upset resident. A distinction must be made between being responsive to community complaints and concerns on the one hand, and bending over backwards and derailing an entire process based on one squeaky wheel on the other.

Council represents all residents of Revelstoke and their authority comes from the voters who put them in office. To consistently allocate a disproportionate amount of time fretting about the few who complain loudly means not spending time working on the big picture issues that voters put them in office to deal with.

The Public Works department last week tabled a thoughtful and well researched report that dealt with how to divvy up costs for the project. The department was also partially responsible for bringing in about $840,000 in provincial and federal funding for the project. Yet, for TV viewers, it must seem like every time the project gets discussed, the department gets called to front and centre to account for their truancy on the file.