Paging Professor Rodin!

City Council expressed some frustrations with the nature of the messenger when it comes to the delivery of news of council's deliberations on financial matters of late.

As part of the nearly three hour session on Monday, was a bit of discussion on how the local media was perhaps not quite fully up to date on the nature of the city's financial happenings.

In particular it seems a recent report on CBC's Daybreak North seemed to raise the ire of Councillor Joy Thorkelson, who took issue with their accounts of the financial situation with a report which the Councillor labelled as irresponsible.

She suggested that local media was offering up confusing information on the topic of the city's current

financial travails and sought to clear up the misunderstandings that may have been created from recent media attention to the city's situation.

She observed that in her opinion, that the media may be having a difficulty in reviewing the city's efforts, as it struggles with budgetary concerns and equating those discussions with deficits.

On the topic of media reports and deficits, one talking point that she offered up for consideration was a report that the city was at the moment running a 500,000 deficit.

A subject which she addressed with an "ask and answer session" with Dan Rodin, inviting the CFO to confirm that since he was hired as the City's financial Officer, that the city had never run a 500,000 deficit, a question that the CFO answered in the affirmative.

As the discussion continued on, the Mayor offered up the helpful thought that maybe the City's Chief Financial Officer could offer up a quick tutorial for the city's various media outlets, providing a primer of sorts for them as to the nature of budgets and deficits and all that goes into them.

Considering the ever approaching timeline of Mr. Rodin's pending departure, the CFO is scheduled to leave the City's employ in mid May, he may not have the spare time at the moment to provide tutorials while trying to provide a budgetary conclusion that may meet with Council's (and the taxpayers) approval.

Perhaps however, if he's looking for a little side income upon his departure from City Hall, he could offer up a course in Civic Financials with Northwest Community College.

Considering the ongoing drama surrounding the financial situation for the City, we imagine that more than just a few of the local media participants might find it quite interesting, not to mention helpful as to trying to figure out just what's going on.

You can review the scolding of the media from the City's video archive, the Councillor's concerns run from the 2 hour 41 minute mark to about 2 hours 45 minutes.