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It’s easy for municipal politicians to look upon the corporations they’ve been elected to manage as businesses for which they are sitting on an executive board. Municipalities have assets; infrastructure, physical properties and a brand. They have income in the form of taxes and fees. They have expenses. They have stakeholders; residents and businesses they could not exist without.
It is, to some extent, the responsibility of a council to manage things like assets and growth.
But a municipality is not a business. Its goal is not revenue. While profits and debt management might be important, as well as considering the value of physical assets and the cost of doing business, revenue can only be the premeans to an end. Assets are not assets purely because of their physical value, but also their value to the social fabric of the communities that exist within them.
It’s an easy thing to lose sight of for a small group looking at millions of dollars of costs, debt, so many holes to fill and such incomprehensibly large costs that it might feel at times like being at the helm of a sinking ship.
In the long term, the value of a community is in its people. How well those people are supported and encouraged to make their community great. It motivates volunteers. It motivates the type of people who feel inspired by that community to move there, to invest their money, their time and their lives in that place.
When young, talented newcomers decide to settle in the County, they are not drawn by dunes and wineries. Those things are incidental. A bonus. Toronto has beaches, too, and from there, the Niagara region is extremely accessible.
What they are drawn to is the community. The opportunities. The charming, small-town events—kitchen parties, strawberry socials and bluegrass festivals. The genuine enthusiasm. These things are a part of the ineffable quality that gives the community its form.
Those things happen around the County’s gathering spaces. In its parks and halls. In terms of a business, perhaps they could be seen as its branding and marketing. Expenses designed to attract and retain clientele. On their own perhaps, they are nothing more than weighty expenses taking up revenue from more pressing matters. But while affordable housing and functional municipal water prices are definitely priorities, their costs should not be filled by selling off assets that are not just physical, but social.
Picton Town Hall is one such asset. Given its location and the current popularity of the County, it could easily bring in an infusion of cash that to the average person looks like a lot of money. With the firehall no longer in commission, its usage has naturally dropped, and it’s easy to make a business case to sell.
But the hall isn’t just property. It hosts Food Not Bombs, a year-round, bi-weekly, barrier-free community dinner. It continues to be home to a large variety of events: dances, social clubs and theatrical performances.
Community members have discussed using the building, now free of a fire station, as a farmers’ market, a community food hub, a centre for training and workshops, all run by the vibrant community it has supported.
These things aren’t likely to bring the municipality the infusion of cash a private sale would. But any municipal councillor who fails to see their value has forgotten the business they’ve gotten into.
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