Bureaucratese spreading like a virus

Just one thing more.
Before I put to rest my rant about mayors speaking a modernized dialect of bureaucratese instead of street-level English, another hair-pulling example hit my desk.
This time the offender is Aurora Mayor Phyllis Morris.
Here's the story:
Regency Acres Public School Grade 5 student James Andrew asked this question of Mayor Morris: With too much housing development, where will all the animals go?
Here's the mayor's answer: "James, currently the town of Aurora has in excess of 700 acres of green space that will never be developed. This is made up of a combination of woodlots, green open spaces and active park lands. The Oak Ridges Moraine also covers a significant area of Aurora and there are strict regulations that significantly limit development within natural areas such as valley lands, woodlots and stream corridors.
"For those areas in Aurora that will be developed, the town and the developers abide by strict environmental standards and conduct detailed environmental studies to assess the potential loss of vegetation and animal habitat."
Phyllis, Phyllis, Phyllis: —  the kid's only 11. He won't shave 'til he's 16; he's got a get-home-before-dark curfew; he still kisses his mommy when nobody's looking and he only weighs 70 pounds. The little guy's still bummed out 'cause there's no Santa Claus, the cute girl in his class doesn't know he's alive and if she did, he'd die. All he wants to know is what's going to happen to the groundhogs and the little green frogs if houses take up all the land.
Let's not subject poor little James or anyone to such bureaucratic jargon as "natural areas such as valley lands," or "woodlots and stream corridors" or "assess the potential loss of vegetation and animal habitat."
I gave Phyllis a heads up and told her, as a followup to Tuesday's post, I was using her answer to the where-will-all-the-animals-go question.
Here's what Phyllis said, "Join the club and kick me in the head. People who know me know I care about the little animals."
While Phyllis is as bright as a shiny new penny, she missed the mark on this one. The issue is not how much the mayor of Aurora cares about all God's creatures big and small. The issue is how the mayor answers a child's question.
P.S.
In Tuesday's post, I targeted Newmarket Tony Van Bynen, reminding him that his use of bureaucratese makes me break out in hives.
I have to hand it to Mr. Van Bynen — he knows how to take it on the chin. The former banker took a hard look at himself and admitted he's got more than one problem. Admitting to over using bureacratese, he fessed up to being fluent in bankerese. Actually, the former banker is multilingual. As well as English, the Holland-born mayor speaks dutch.
Tony sent my Tuesday post to York Region chairperson Bill Fisch and asked him to give it a read.
Newmarket's mayor's too nice to say this but I'm not: Mr. Fisch needs a crash course in human-as-a-second-language. As well, every government employee, including those working in communication departments across York Region, should sit in the front row and stay to the very end of the human-as-a-second-language class.
Here's an extra request to Tony: If, by chance, you can't break this bureacratese-bankerese habit, send me all your reports in Dutch.
To Phyllis: take a breath. Do a little listening and don't forget you're doing a bang-up job and we love you.

Comments

[Richar Johnson]

I'm with Phyllis on this one, as I'm sure you would expect I would be.

Why you choose to go after Phyllis for answering an honest question with an honest answer is beyond me when you know that there are much bigger fish to fry, including the investigation now underway at council related to the past mayor allegedly requesting and receiving, without Council's knowledge and with out the knowledge of residents calling the town, the phone logs of the past council on a monthly basis for an extended period of time from September 2004 onwards. One has to wonder if he was tracking who Phyllis and Nigel Kean were talking to and for how long, in the lead up to the election. Given that I was informed by the Town Clerk that Mr. Jones apparently broke the town's own policies as did a senior town administrator (yet to be named) and knowing that Mr. Jones is now trying to win the nomination of the federal Liberal seat the ethical and potentially legal implications of a story like that appear to me to be far more newsworthy. You might even call the story Aurora's (Water Restricted) Watergate or something even more clever than that.

In any case I would not miss your blog for the world Joan, no matter what.