Dimming accountability
Maybe it doesn’t matter. Perhaps it isn’t vital to our daily lives that local government hear our worries. Our concerns. Our fears. Maybe the problem with public business is the public. Perhaps accountability is overrated. I think it’s crucial. More important now than ever. Further, I believe unaccountable institutions and governments are a threat— both […]
Boxed out
What is to be done with the rabble? The ratepayers who disagree? Residents, who challenge decisions? The general public who resists the arbitrary judgement of government institutions? What of the poor and marginalized who must go about their day with more urgent challenges in front of them? Or those who merely question the collective wisdom […]
Joyful
It was so easy. The only challenging bit was navigating the provincial Covid vaccination site and booking the booster shot (even that wasn’t so hard). Once I arrived at the Picton community centre, I was processed promptly and humanely. With kindness and patience. Then I was out the door. Twenty minutes. So easy. It was […]
Missing signals
As of Monday, there were 256 active cases of COVID-19 in the Hastings Prince Edward Public Health Unit (HPEPHU) catchment area, including Prince Edward County. It’s a big number—the biggest we’ve seen in this region. Ten of the current cases were in hospital on Monday and four were in ICU. About 47 per cent, approaching […]
Il-considered
I don’t understand the argument. I don’t know why some folks choose not to be vaccinated against Covid. I understand reluctance. I understand some instinctive resistance. I also get the I’m-young-and healthy-so-the-virus-won’t-kill-me thinking. I think it is wrong on the available evidence— but I understand the motivating idea. What I don’t understand is whether they […]
Too much
There are more expensive places to live in Ontario—but not many. The average tax burden for a household in Prince Edward County was $5,405 in 2020, according to BMA Management Consulting in its annual comparative review of Ontario municipalities. (The tax burden is measured by adding the average property tax bill to the average waterworks […]
Scale
Humans aren’t good with big numbers. Or really small ones. We know that millions, billions and trillions are big numbers, but it is hard for our brains to process the difference between them. When US president Joe Biden presses lawmakers to pass a $5 trillion, $3 trillion or $1.75 trillion Build Back Better bill, he […]
Who decides?
Andreas Bolik has no business making decisions about your waterworks. No more than you should be telling him how to run his water and septic systems. Councillor Bolik—and indeed most of his Council colleagues—has no stake in the County’s waterworks. None. It matters not at all to them if water rates rise, fall or the […]
The last parade
Everyone loves a parade. Or, rather, we used to. The days of emerging from our homes, lining along County streets, shivering in the cold and sipping frantically on piping hot chocolate seems to have come to an end. A relic of a bygone era. A casualty of a fixation with safety. Of managing risk. These […]
Hard cash
The County has had a peculiar relationship with development charges. Not in the quirky or oddly amusing sense of the term, rather more in the every-steplands- in-another-bucket meaning. Development fees are new-ish to the County. The general idea is that development charges (DCs) are assessed by the municipality and paid by developers to expand things […]