It’s broken

Most had made their pitch before. Barely suppressing the weariness many feel toward the issue of council size after nearly a decade of debate, the handful of folks who gathered in the pews at Shire Hall on Thursday morning had come either to promote their personal plan, or to advise council to do nothing. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” is a common, if colloquial, encapsulation of this position.

It is too bad none of these folks stayed behind to attend the council committee meeting later that afternoon. It might have changed their minds.

The meeting began with a presentation by the Hastings and Prince Edward Learning Foundation, urging council to renew its “Feed the Meter” campaign, in which funds gathered in parking meters in Picton during December are used by this organization to provide healthy snacks to school kids in the region (the organization distributed 86,000 meals or snacks last year). County staff will prepare a report for council.

There was another short discussion about how recreation committees use their municipal funding, mostly about new rules designed to ensure this money is used for recreation services and programs rather than capital projects. Staff will prepare a report.

Another discussion arose over a recent decision to allow second suites or garden suite apartment dwellings to be developed within existing homes. Specifically, the issue raised in the meeting last week dealt with concerns that limiting this type of dwelling creation to roads serviced by fire and ambulance services amounted to discrimination against homeowners living on private lanes. Staff explained that interested homeowners in this situation were welcome to make their individual case before council—but prudence dictated that where emergency services weren’t guaranteed, it could not extend this new policy without checks and balances. Still some were not satisfied, so staff will prepare a report.

Finally, the committee dug into the issue of the personal use of County-owned vehicles. Again. The second such discussion in five months.

For the next 40 minutes, council members swapped stories about spotting trucks outside the County or allegedly being used for personal purposes. Much of it was hearsay—reports they had heard from others. Someone saw a County truck loaded with a water tank. Another with a snow plow blade. One councillor observed a County truck at a Belleville laundromat. Another saw a truck with a baby seat strapped in front .

The commissioner explained, as he did in December, that of the dozen or so vehicles the municipality allows staff to take home with them, there are strict policies over their use. When he receives complaints he investigates and takes remedial action.

Some councillors were satisfied with this answer. But most were not. So the matter spun around the horseshoe again. Each viewpoint painstakingly restated. When at last the discussion was exhausted, it was decided another report was needed. As well as an update to the County’s vehicle use policy.

Forty minutes of a 90 minute meeting were spent on an issue that has no material impact on either the operations, finances or governance of Prince Edward County. It is a petty and smallminded discussion that can be found in most coffee shops around the County any day of the week. It has no place at Shire Hall. Yet this is how council chooses to use its time.

The County has a nearly $600 million infrastructure deficit. That means that in order to improve our roads, bridges and waterworks to reasonable standard, it would cost more than half a billion dollars. We don’t have that kind of money. Yet these assets continue to deteriorate. So each and every year we dig this hole about $38 million deeper.

But our council chooses to spend its time wringing its hands about baby seats in County trucks in Belleville.

The meeting on Thursday afternoon produced no decisions. Instead, staff will go back to their desks to write reports—variations on reports they have written many times before. And then someday soon, we will do it all over again.

Meanwhile, your road gets worse—unless, of course, you live on Union Road. Your water bill rises, even though you use less. And each day, we fall farther and farther behind.

Not to worry though—your council is getting to the bottom of this truck business.

Forgive me if I flinch the next time someone suggests council “ain’t broke.”

rick@wellingtontimes.ca