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Lump of coal
In this my last column of 2019, I am once again making the case for a waterworks commission in Prince Edward County. I declare this thesis upfront so as to wave off anyone anticipating a cheerful holiday message, but also because I suspect my purpose won’t be clear for a few paragraphs into this unhappy story.
If you are still with me, I say: thank you, and: you were warned. There is no joy in the nouns and verbs that follow.
First, I must explain that we (the County) forgot to renew our ambulance agreement last spring. It is set to expire in two weeks. Without an agreement, this life-saving service comes to a sudden halt on December 31. When I say ‘we forgot’, I literally mean County administrators forgot to renew this agreement. Eight months ago.
Some background: Prince Edward County provides land ambulance services in partnership with Hastings County, and has done so since amalgamation. The County is the junior partner in this arrangement. Hastings tells this municipality what we need, how and where to store our gear, and prescribes the method and means by which we manage the system. Prince Edward County’s cost share is about $2.7 million per year.
Overall, the system works acceptably, in as much as ambulances generally show up when we need them and cart us away as required. Operationally there have been some bumps. A decade ago, Shire Hall became entangled in a really bad deal to house this service in Picton. (Shire Hall has since extracted itself from that arrangement and currently houses the ambulance service in the new fire hall in Picton.)
There has never been, however, good visibility into this business. Council renews the deal every five years with little scrutiny. That may be indicative of a service agreement that works well. But it sure would be nice to know if it is based on more than blissful ignorance. It would be great if we had more eyes on this deal—if for no other reason than to notice that it is about to end.
In any event, the land ambulance arrangement expires soon. The County was required to renew the deal last spring. That didn’t happen. The renewal deadline turns out to have been an oversight, explained entirely as “this apparently didn’t happen”.
So yesterday, council was asked to approve a one-year extension to the deal. To paper over this mistake. But they will have done so blindly—without time to review the agreement, to negotiate terms and without knowing the cost.
Allow me to repeat: Council was compelled to sign an agreement without knowing how much it will cost County taxpayers. Otherwise, it would risk disrupting ambulance service for County residents in a few day’s time. It was a bad place to be.
Now, let us be clear. Mistakes happen. Goodness knows this columnist makes plenty—especially the remembering kind of omissions. A symptom of age. Perhaps a busy workload. But don’t we have these handy calendars on our devices that remind us of appointments, birthdays and anniversaries?
I am confident Shire Hall will fix this administrative error without the need for this scribbler’s guidance—though we will watch for the eventual cost of this oversight and any change in terms.
My broader concern relates to governance. As a single-tier municipality, our local government oversees an extraordinarily broad swath of activities—from the banal (cutting grass in public parks) to managing the extraordinarily complex systems (land ambulance service, social services, a longterm care facility and a collection of mismatched waterworks systems).
Single-tier municipal governments are common in cities—rare in rural communities. Most municipalities retain townships or wards or somesuch at a lower tier that look after basic services, while a regional government oversees more complex operations at the upper tier— fire, waterworks and the like.
The County balls it all up into one. It is how we have council members adjudicating a fenceline squabble between two neighbours on the same agenda as it acquires several million dollars in trucks. It is how we buy a waterworks plan that details a roadmap to a place we will never be.
We likely checked the wrong box when we filled out the forms to amalgamate in 1998. But many involved in the debate at the time were rightfully terrified of the prospect that the province might combine the County with Belleville and Hastings County into one regional government.
All this to say, that it is difficult to manage hundreds of agreements that flow across the desk of municipal managers—from the spectacularly wee to the breathtakingly intricate and profound. The surprise isn’t that we missed a renewal deadline—but rather that we don’t make this kind of slip-up more often. Switching continually from the mundane to the complex makes the job of governance much more precarious.
In previous columns, I have explained that it is embarrassingly inappropriate for council members with no stake in the waterworks system to oversee the management of the system. Consumers of water pay the entire bill—none of it flows onto property taxpayers who do not use the system.
But aside from this fundamental misalignment of interests, there is the sheer complexity of single-tier government. This raises the prospects for big, costly mistakes.
A waterworks commission will serve as an early warning system. It will steer the municipality away from problems and enable council to focus on County business. It clearly needs some attention.
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