"I guess it's too bad the community didn't support them," Alderman Vi Beck on the dairy closing.

The above quote displays in shocking clarity what is wrong with the attitude of the present and even past city councils.

Hundreds of thousands of territorial government dollars went into the dairy even before the city took it under its wing. City ratepayers carried a debt amounting to hundreds of thousands more dollars for years before the inevitable happened and the misadventure collapsed under its own unreasonable weight.

But let us come back to city council and the voters who, as an informal Yellowknifer poll indicates, care less about dairies and houseboats and a whole lot more about taxes.

Voters should be asking themselves: What has city council be telling city administration about how tax dollars should be spent?

Do we want 10 years of time and effort by city administration spent on developing a dairy?

Do we want city lawyers spending costly legal hours fending off the legitimate request of ratepayers who want secret meetings stopped?

What about the legal costs of city lawyers trying to figure out how to get jurisdiction over waters the federal government has no intention of handing over either here or in any other municipality in the country?

Do we need city planners bending their minds around the huge costs of a very high priced subdivision development when the housing market is flush with hundreds of homes for sale at prices far lower than original value?

These, along with pretty trees that die, $80,000 skateboard parks and laying waste to potential tourism sites, are several of many examples where city administration misdirects its efforts while mayor and council dance on puppet strings.

Why could the same resources not be put into coping with territorial cutbacks, bracing for jobs lost to division, running an efficient cost conscious city during a slack economy?

Give the ratepayers and business owners lower taxes and they will take over the job of making a bigger and more beautiful Yellowknife.

As for the dairy, Yellowknifers did support it to the hilt, just as they support city hall. Who is going to make certain city hall supports Yellowknifers?

When a real estate developer wants to put a multi-unit building in a neighborhood zoned for single-family dwellings, there's bound to be fireworks.

And so it was on Matonabee Street, where Les Rocher has applied to rezone the Franklin Avenue corner lot he owns.

Residents have every right to be concerned about what is happening to their neighborhood. They shouldn't have to defend the status quo. It is up to the developer to make the case for re-zoning. And in this instance, a little compromise wouldn't hurt.