Comment
Citizens or consumers
Is populism seeping into County politics? Are we at risk of becoming consumers of services rather than citizens? What responsibility do we have as residents and taxpayers to advance our community? Has Covid altered our mutual contract?
The message resounding from town halls in this municipal election is of detachment rather than engagement. But it’s more than that. Local politics, at least as expressed at all-candidate meetings, is tending toward the transactional: What will you (candidate) do for me? Some folks insist their taxes are spent where they can see them. They don’t trust their elected officials to work in their interest and have a dwindling sense of the collective good. Of the power of community. Was it ever thus? Or is there a harder edge to our politics locally?
We seem some distance from the “Ask not what your country can do for you” aspirational sense of community. After all, why should we care if others can’t afford a home in Prince Edward County? If I have a home I can afford and pay for, is it really in my interest to see more folks living close by? Especially affordable homes? How much of my property tax dollars do I want to see put into homes for other people?
These questions are rarely stated quite this way. Instead such objections are couched euphemistically as ‘It’s not what I imagine as the County’ or ‘It will harm the character and charm of the County.’
If I have retired wealthy to Prince Edward County, do I really care if the local economy works? Or, if there’s a place for young people?
Some just want their roads fixed. Beyond that, some just want local government to stay out of their way.
Worryingly, some elected folks and candidates are feeding the consumer model of citizenship.
Mayoral candidate Dianne O’Brien opposes low-income housing outright— proposing that developers be compelled to build rent-to-own.
With 12 years of incumbency on her side, Ameliasburgh candidate Janice Maynard suggests that perhaps the County shouldn’t be in the business of affordable homes at all. Perhaps the responsibility to ensure homes for our neighbours belongs solely at the feet of the federal and provincial levels of government—not local government. Maynard calls for a massive shift of County resources and dollars away from the things that support our community to roads and bridges.
Like a lot of populist messages, it gets traction at these meetings. Likely at the doorstep too.
There is, however, a cost.
When the frustrated resident tells the candidates from the back of the room that he wants Ameliasburgh tax dollars spent in Ameliasburgh, he is expressing a narrow view of citizenship. It is borne of frustration and a sincere belief his roads should be better maintained.
It is the upshot, I think, of a decade in which elected officials have failed to acknowledge the arithmetic fact, that we cannot afford the 1,100 kilometres of roads that have been downloaded onto the 25,000 residents of Prince Edward County to maintain. It’s not an opinion; it is the conclusion of experts hired by the County in 2012 and reaffirmed recently. Yet, neither Shire Hall nor elected officials have yet formed the backbone to say it out loud.
So, while the resident is right to complain about the condition of his road, the truth is that there are no good answers. But suggesting that Shire Hall get out of the business of community-building—that it merely becomes a funnel of taxpayer dollars into the bottomless pit of the County roads department— is a dangerous path. It is the end of community.
Janice Maynard has pushed for more road money in every budget. Having witnessed the pointlessness of throwing an extra $1 or $2 million into an already expensive roads department, Maynard is planning to go all-in. She said last week that an extra $20 million should be added to the roads budget each year. Where is this money coming from? Property taxpayers? Or libraries? Arenas? Parks? Affordable homes? Transit services?
Robbing community building projects, including nurturing affordable home development, to feed a road hole that will never be filled is a dead end. Stealing support from our most vulnerable and giving it to asphalt companies is as immoral as it is futile. Worse, it is corrosive. To us all.
Correction: Last week, this column reported that Mayoral candidate Kyle Mayne was forced to sit through the Ameliasburgh all-candidate meeting on the town hall window ledge as every chair had been taken. In fact, a resident gave up their chair for the candidate.
One town hall event does not a survey make. I found people at the Picton all candidates meeting October 6 and the Mayoral meeting the night before very concerned about housing affordability and receptive to what the County has been doing with the Prince Edward County Affordable Housing Corporation. As well as health care and daycare for the 195 children on the waiting list – addressing the latter might free up potential employees in the community.
Ironically (or not) the very worst stretch of Salem Road at the Belleville Road intersection was ripped up and levelled by the County guys the morning after the all candidates meeting at Ameliasburgh Town Hall. Not much happens in Ward 4 except bad roads so it’s a hot topic for residents.