Comment
Feelings
How big is it? How big was it? How big will it be? Don’t we need answers to these questions before tinkering with our economy?
Last week, Council considered but ultimately rejected a notion to increase the municipal accommodations tax—a tax applied to accommodation providers as a proxy for the entire tourism sector in Prince Edward County. There were no data to inform their decision. No trend line. No analysis to indicate an increase was warranted. Or viable. Or destructive. Nothing (save for the persistent desire to extract more money from its residents and businesses).
The episode illustrates that our municipality doesn’t operate on data; its decision-making is based on feelings. Nothing more than feelings.
Early flight was pocked with disaster. Most occurred in daylight on clear days. But the Great War required pilots to push their capabilities in evermore precarious conditions— at night, in fog, cloud cover. A great many crashed into the ground at full throttle. Their brain was telling them one thing, while the ground rushing toward them was saying something very different—and final. So common is this category of spatial disorientation that it has a name: controlled flight into terrain (CFIT). Boeing estimates that CFIT has caused more than 9,000 deaths worldwide. It continues to this day.
In May 2012, a new airliner left Jakarta on a demonstration flight with 45 people on board. Minutes later, the plane, flying through clouds, plowed into Mount Salak. Everyone onboard was killed. The investigation later found that the pilots ignored cockpit instrument warnings of the approaching doom—believing it was an error in the instruments. Sometimes data, even when presented in glowing dials and flashing lights, can’t prevent instinct-driven catastrophe.
The vast swath of rules, regulations and taxes emerging from the kneejerk drive to manage the tourism economy in Prince Edward County remains vulnerable to CFIT. Feelings overwhelming knowledge, data, or insight. Tourism management was always an over-reaction born from panic propelled by the pandemic blip.
Without any solid information about the scale or scope of the challenges nor the efficacy of the remedies Shire Hall dreamed up, Council reacted. It twisted itself out of shape—at times losing all sense of graciousness and decency that has long defined this community.
As the pandemic has subsided, so has the massing horde of visitors. Council has responded by slowly unwinding some of the more Draconian restrictions and regulations. But it has done so, again, without data. It continues to make decisions based on feelings. The problem is that Council has no more sense of the direction or trends driving this economy in 2023 than it did in 2020. Or 1998. It is a shamefully wobbly foundation upon which to nurture an economy.
Filling the pews at Shire Hall has always been a reliable means to effect change in the County. And while 40 angry residents queuing up to speak against a prospective decision is indicative of something, it isn’t data.
How many visitors come to Prince Edward County each year? How long do they stay? How do they spend? Is it rising, falling, or is it plateauing? How many bottles of wine are sold in the County? How many folks do they employ? What trends shape the sector’s payroll? Is it rising, falling or sliding sideways?
How many single-family homes are being built in the County this year? Compared to last? How many rental apartments? Townhomes? What are the trends? Where is the reliable data?
We think we know these things. We see new basements sprouting from the ground in Picton and believe we understand what is happening in our economy. We hear talk at the coffee shop. But just like the pilots who trust their instincts more than the data in front of them, it turns out feelings can be dangerous when you’re flying into a mountainside at full throttle.
Shire Hall simply doesn’t have the data or the instruments to inform Council’s decisions. Nor, seemingly, the curiosity to do so.
We are 25 years into the current form of this municipality. By now, a self-respecting economy would be compiling basic information and presenting it to the community as a means to inform and support its decision-making. Instead, we do everything ad hoc: we hire a consultant to prepare a report. For the simplest of things. These hired guns then produce a snapshot in time that is stale before it has time to gather dust on a shelf.
So here is the prescription: start small. Begin by assembling rudimentary employment data, housing data, and tourism data. Businesses must play a role in pulling and compiling this information. But the leadership and direction should come from Shire Hall. It must determine a common data collection format, methods and timing.
Until some initiative is taken in this regard and some basic patterns emerge, Council risks running smack into a few more mountainsides.
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