Good old days

All-candidates meetings ought to be clarifying events—opportunities, rare as they are, to learn about how government works, how its services are delivered and ultimately, who might do the best job of governing the County.

Sadly, some of these meetings are falling well short of this mark.

Some folks attending the all-candidates meeting at the Rec Centre at Wellington on the Lake last week may well be forgiven if they now believe their water comes from Belleville. It doesn’t. But disappointingly, this wasn’t at all clear from the explanation given by the mayoral candidates last week. Some clearly don’t know how the County’s waterworks function. Those who do, seemingly felt it unnecessary to unravel the facts from the ball of confusion.

In Ameliasburgh a week ago, candidates decided to join in on a witch hunt, eager to deflect the frustration staring them in the face. Rather than answer questions, explain hard truths and address criticisms put to them and their leadership over the past four years, they joined the lowgrumbling chorus from the sidelines who complain that council has ceded control to its senior administrators.

Presumably, these folks wish to go back to the good old days. Those days when budgets were never reconciled from year to year. When money flowed freely between operations and departments—a little bit from here to top up over there, with no one the wiser.

It was in the good old days when we borrowed $11 million in a doomed experiment to pave every road in the County. It would save us money, they touted. It didn’t, and we are still paying that bill.

Not coincidentally, the councillors moaning loudest about the control they feel has been taken from them are the same folks who thought they knew better than the 81 per cent of voters who said, in 2010, they wanted the size of council issue addressed. They are the same councillors who knew better than the 23 residents who gathered over three long days last year to deliberate this issue and make a recommendation to council. These are the same councillors who rejected the clear will of the people. Twice.

These folks want more power. To do what?

Determine budgets? They have that power. To develop policy? Got that. Set objectives and goals for the administration? Got that too. Oversee administrators to ensure they are meeting their goals and objectives? They do that, too.

No, what these councillors actually mean is they want to manage the business. They want to go back to the good old days when councillors haggled over which road was repaired, whose bridge was replaced and whose water main was fixed. The good old days when your party allegiance determined the smoothness of your road.

Presumably, the three incumbent councillors from Ameliasburgh wish to be on each job site—directing graders over here and trucks over there. Or staring down the hole telling the fellow with the shovel in his hand, where and when to dig.

In these final days of the campaign, it is our sincere hope that those who understand the vast improvements made to the County’s business over the past five years will speak up— that they will correct the wrong information being cast about like freshly churned manure— even if it is not what constituents want to hear.

Today, anyone can peer into many layers of the County’s budgets and compare against actual results. Or one can get a brief summary of each business— where it is spending money and why. Whatever your level of interest or concern—the answers are all there. It is all laid out on the County’s website or at Shire Hall. The business of the County is transparent and the organization can—for the first time since amalgamation—be held accountable for its performance.

Instead, we have the spectacle of council candidates confusing matters of public interest. And worse, creating scapegoats for their own inability to understand or explain the narrowing array of choices available to address the very real concerns residents have for their community and public infrastructure.

We are not going back to the good old days. Nor are we going back to the days of the old boys club when a small group of folks dickered, behind closed doors, over which road was fixed and from which pot they would take the money.

All-candidates meetings are too few to waste on noisy and misleading vote-getting exercises. Candidates are urged to use these opportunities to guide residents to the vast resources and information that is available to them—so that they might understand their local government better.

The County’s business has never been as open, transparent and accountable as it is today. We have no desire to go backward.

rick@wellingtontimes.ca