King not happy with folks going ‘down to the dirt’ in Holyrood

By Mark Squibb

Upon entering the Holyrood Town Hall, you’ll be greeted by stacks of bottled water.

It’s a reminder of the predicament the town found itself in this past August when leaks in municipal water lines lowered the water pressure throughout much of Holyrood leading to temporary business closures and some residents having to go without water for several days.

During last week’s council meeting, councillor Mable Tilley said some people on social media have been questioning why the town hadn’t called a state of emergency.

“I just wanted to do a huge clarification there,” said Tilley. “The state of emergency is there for when the town cannot cope with the emergency. So, it was a no-brainer with the fire. The wildfire was spreading…. That was something that had to be done… With our water (emergency), our CAO, our public works, all our staff, all our council, mayor, we all came through this. We never had a boil order, we had enough staff, we handled it without having to have a state of emergency called. So, I just wanted to clarify the difference between a water emergency and a state of emergency.”

Councillor Bruce King also called out those spreading negativity on social media especially against staff, council, or other residents.

“You really need to think before you type,” said King. “Because some of this stuff was downright rude, it was downright ignorant, it was downright mean. And it’s almost like you think the people up here went and popped all the watermains just so we could all sit around and have a big laugh about it. People worked a long time during the crisis, or whatever you want to call it, here in this building, out in the holes in the ground, trying to get the water back as fast as humanly possible. But you can only dig a hole so fast, and you have to find the leak and you have to fix the leak, so getting on social media and barking about stuff is not going to change nothing. But it’s disheartening for the people that are out there putting 100 percent effort into everything, only to go home after a 12-hour shift and turn on social media and see Joe Blow or whoever cutting you down to the dirt. There’s no need of that.”

Meanwhile, council has approved a new emergency preparedness plan to help navigate future emergencies, be they fire or drought.

Tilley said she was “very excited” to bring the motion forward.

“It is ready to go, it has been vested through council, and it has gone back and forth to the government, and it is ready to roll,” said Tilley.

Mayor Laura Crawley said the plan will be uploaded to the Town’s website for the public to view.