Listen

I listen to council meetings while cleaning the kitchen. Or tidying the garage. Were I a bit more tech-savvy, I might listen to these proceedings as I cut grass too—stubby white candy canes drooping from my ears as I parade around my lawn like I just don’t care. But that doesn’t happen. My daily commute consumes perhaps 45 seconds each way, so this doesn’t work as a council listening venue either. So it is mostly in the kitchen—performing these routine tasks—that I tend to listen to a council or committee meeting.

Honestly, I enjoy it. The back and forth. The competition of ideas and perspectives all struggling for oxygen. For relevancy. For majority support. Without leaving my kitchen.

I am just tech-wise enough to use a Bluetooth speaker that projects the council livestream signal from my phone reliably and easily throughout the kitchen. Of course, council’s livestream provides video too. Still, I have never found that watching the sausage being prepared enhanced the experience—except on those rare occasions such as when former Councillor Keith MacDonald threatened to leap over the horseshoe to emphasize his point with a dissenting colleague in a more direct way.

Live streaming is a relatively new way to monitor council choices, direction, and controversy in Prince Edward County. The idea was promoted by former councillor Lenny Epstein, as a means of expanding the reach of municipal policymaking and escaping the mediation of newspaper and radio commentary. The first meeting streamed online was on June 14, 2016.

Part of the challenge then, from my perspective, was a several days-delay between the live event and when the recorded video was posted online. This meant that I had to rearrange my day to ensure I listened to the live meeting—or risk getting stale information or news. Now the recorded meeting is available within minutes of the end of the session.

It means I can listen on my own time or schedule—like dinner clean-up. It also means I can scroll through to the bits that most interest me. For example, at a committee of the whole meeting earlier this month, staff unveiled sweeping new reforms to the County’s planning process. Regular readers know this is a topic of acute interest to this columnist.

New homebuilding has been stagnant in Prince Edward County for more than a decade, the pace lagging well behind our neighbours in Belleville and Quinte West. Yet, demand to live in the County is strong and growing, despite (perhaps amplified by) the pandemic. The market’s inability to respond to this demand has pushed prices sharply upward— making homeownership in Prince Edward County unaffordable to all but a shrinking cohort. It is a trend that has dire implications for our schools, health care services, and municipal services.

So I was keen to hear how the County’s new CAO, Marcia Wallace, would approach streamlining municipal planning processes. The meeting, however, lasted more than two hours. Now, I can drag out kitchen cleaning with the best of them—but not two hours. I was able to scroll to that presentation and discussion to hear first-hand the ideas, the plans, and the reaction from council members.

(To be clear there were other interesting items on that agenda—a presentation by the All Welcome Here organization, a discussion about parking in Picton, Bloomfield and Wellington and a review of the Community and Economic Development Commission— that I caught up with later.)

Planning process improvements are vital, with critical implications. But these developments didn’t merit coverage in this paper—or any other media outlet. It is regrettable but predictable. Newspapers are struggling and our attention span is shrinking. There is a smaller market and diminished capacity for the long-form coverage and explanations of council business and court proceedings that once defined newspapering. Other media outlets, sadly, are driven by quick hits and pop culture minutiae.

So, we must forage for this information on our own if we want a complete picture. Fortunately, the County’s streaming service makes it easy to monitor and burrow into the municipal issues you are most interested in on your timeframe. Council members, too, have become more conscious of the listening electorate at home.

Governments need oversight. This is particularly true at the local level, where there is no natural opposition. So it is up to us, as constituents, to question, probe, and challenge. To perform this vital democratic role.

Tomorrow’s (Thursday) Committee of the Whole meeting is jam-packed—it will feature information about the replacement of the Norris Whitney (Belleville) bridge, the Millennium Trail Launch Point plan, the Farm Grant plan as well as new fees for brush disposal at municipal sites. Each of these issues will have a direct impact on folks in our community.

Consider taking some time to listen to the debate. www.thecounty.ca Look for the streaming tab on the front page, and follow the links.

Let’s discuss.

rick@wellingtontimes.ca

Editor’s note: Mark Kerr, the municipality’s communications and media co-ordinator issues tweets on meeting days outlining agenda topics. You can follow him on Twitter @Shire_Hall