Less is more

Is it possible, and please hear me out on this one, that we ask Shire Hall to do too much? We complain about capacity. We complain about competency. We grumble about the bits that go wrong. We gripe about poor communication. We harp on about management. About trucks. Then, we criticize rapidly escalating costs. And debt.

And for sure, a good portion of the whinging emanates from this corner. But maybe we are looking at the problem from the wrong end. Maybe the problem isn’t output— but rather too many inputs. Perhaps we might pause for a moment to talk about what a reasonable basket of services might be, and focus on doing those things well.

Let me guide you, dear reader, to a council committee meeting last week. We join the meeting as a resident of a new neighbourhood in Picton is unhappy with his garbage collection. He wants the County to pick it up. He has read the condo and subdivision agreements and feels he may have discovered a loophole that might compel the municipality to do so. He hadn’t. There was no such loophole. And the County won’t pick up his garbage. But the issue, impacting a few dozen folks, eats time—time from staff who must assure Council its processes and documents are in order. It eats time from council members as their colleagues conjure creative workarounds that might satisfy the presenter and his neighbours— seemingly oblivious to the rat’s nest of a precedent such a one-off solution would let loose.

Cut to a country lane near Consecon. It is a municipal right of way (ROW). Neighbours are disputing who can do what on this strip of County land. The fight has been simmering for months. Accusations. Escalations. A version of Judge Judy is convened around the council table. Each side makes their argument— both laced with the burnished frustration that colours such neighbourhood fights. Then Council sits back in judgment. Some members love this. Others, meanwhile, are surely taking stock of their life choices 30 minutes into the minutiae of competing rights on this public ROW.

The County’s manager attempts to convert this narrow dispute into a County-wide policy— hoping perhaps to avoid being overwhelmed by similar disputes on the other hundreds upon hundreds of similar public ROWs that crisscross the municipality. (An initiative more than a decade ago sought to catalogue all the public ROWs into the County’s GIS system. It was a massive undertaking, with too few folks assigned to the project. It is unclear to this writer, that in 2024 the County yet knows how many ROWs it owns or if it could find them on a map.)

The decision before the committee of council last week was not a by-law—but rather the idea of a by-law that might one day regulate how such public land is used, limits liability exposure, protects the flora and fauna, balances the interests of the community. What could go wrong? Plenty, it turns out. But you can watch the video yourself.

My point here is that Council can’t help itself. Some feel they are not doing their job unless they are grinding axes or uncovering plots by the newcomers seeking to extinguish farming. They must disassemble the most benign and reasonable proposals to thwart the onward march of the newcomer horde.

Again, to be clear, there are important rights that must be balanced and sensitively managed, with reasonableness and flexibility, but surely, we can agree that they don’t have to be litigated one ROW at a time. Alas, at least one councillor bemoaned out loud the lack of a ‘site-specific solution.’

There are no bounds on Council’s ambitions for its bureaucratic engine. Nor are there constraints. If a council member can dream it, they want a report. Where there is gray, they see the chance to jump in and pull levers.

All of this might be fine if there were no other matters that demanded their time. But too often Council prefers to fritter away their afternoons on matters with little relevance beyond a handful of folks. Too often, they fail—or don’t choose—to see the bigger picture.

I walk the family dog Velma past the old Duke dome lot regularly. Season after season, the lot sits forlorn and derelict. I wonder how much we are paying for the rented temporary fencing that surrounds the property. Is anyone keeping track? I push down my frustration accumulated over 14 years, gazing at this empty lot—that the affordable housing promised seems more distant than ever. More practical folk suggest simply conceding the loss—levelling the muck and tossing some grass seed. Ambitions ratchet lower.

But then I think about dozens of other files. Of roads that we cannot maintain. Of infrastructure projects at a scale unprecedented in this community. Of a long-term care home that needs half a million dollar investment in sprinklers in a structure we will abandon in a few years.

I think about the challenge that—as a single-tier municipality—there is no regional support, expertise or funding available to the County. Then I think about the province’s disappearing act from its role in supporting rural municipalities like ours.

My thoughts return to a single question: What if Shire Hall did less—but did it well?

Adjudicating neighbourhood disputes may be satisfying and rewarding to some—but it is failing the community.

rick@wellingtontimes.ca