Modern times

Perhaps the place is unmanageable. The geography is big. The place populated by too few people. Twenty-five souls per kilometre of road. Yet we receive/demand/ expect the services of suburbia†.

In the wake of the departure of the County’s fifth manager in 15 years, maybe we should ask ourselves why it is so. We may want to do so before jumping into bed with number six.

It’s a lot for one frail yet overall wellmeaning level of government. Roads. Bridges. Waterworks. Parks. Arenas. Transit. Docks. A long-term care home at the end of its life. Eighty-eight buildings. One hundred and twenty properties. Add in three of the biggest, riskiest infrastructure projects ever contemplated in the County.

The place is not in good shape: the County has more debt than assets. It has only a couple of revenue sources it can rely upon—property taxes and water rates. Shire Hall has squeezed a breathtaking amount from a population that isn’t growing. Yet it is still underwater. Squeezing more brings another set of hazards.

The province has made our predicament many times worse. When it first abandoned its problem roads and services on municipalities such as this one, it was too embarrassed to tell us how to manage them. In the early days of this arrangement, it regularly wrote support cheques. But over time, the money dried up, yet the rules over how the services were delivered expanded, becoming ever more onerous and expensive. The province’s expectations expand unchecked while simultaneously slashing funding.

Yet, we, too, may be part of the problem. We accept higher taxes and higher water bills every year without much pushback. In doing so, we let our municipal and federal leaders off the hook. We have other things to worry about.

In the meantime, folks living on the margins must leave the County in which they were born. They are replaced by those for whom rising taxes and costs don’t mean as much. Food banks serve an ever-growing number of clients each season.

We want to believe the municipal machine is working. Yet every signal is flashing red.

We move to the County to get away—but not too far away. A garbage truck trundles to the outer reaches of Point Traverse, Green Point and Point Petre once a week. A recycling truck retraces its steps a few days later. We want our roads paved and smooth.

We are old. We require healthcare services. Recreation. Fire. Rescue. Emergency. We are big-hearted, so we expand support services to paper over the fact that we have made the place unaffordable for all but the wealthy. We make rules and erect barriers that have allowed a once-thick volunteer fabric to become tattered and threadbare. Because liability.

We were afraid of newcomers for so long that Shire Hall could get away with neglecting new homebuilders when the market existed. Now that the market is gone, our leaders chase developers’ affection with the rumpled grace of a spurned lover—promising to lavish them with tear-stained pipes and pumps if only they come back.

We are allergic to an economy that might make it harder to park. We resent visitors who want to share the natural beauty that defines the place. The engines that might alter the municipality’s trajectory are stymied by indifference.

Worst of all, our council representatives struggle to grasp the magnitude of the forces arrayed against them. Despite many hours poring over thousands of pages of reports and deliberating many hard and contentious issues week after week, they are like Charlie Chaplin in Modern Times. Unable to keep up with the conveyor belt, the machine eventually swallows our poor Mr. Chaplin.

It may be too big. The place may be unmanageable.

rick@wellingtontimes.ca

† I struggled to find the correct term here. It is undoubtedly true that amalgamation persuaded the first wave of municipal bureaucrats that a golden age of modern governing was at hand. Plans were drawn up for a grand municipal hall and a new wave of governing synergy. Convoluted financial engineering schemes were modelled to manage road maintenance to an amusing, if ultimately doomed, effect. Nevertheless, the County was entering the big time.

It bred a sense that all the rules of small and careful management of taxpayer dollars and modest ambition were now passé. Old timey. The tidy little management of the former wards, townships and villages was abandoned for bigger, better and grander. There really was a sense that this municipality had been elevated to the ranks of suburbia.

Shire Hall’s headcount expanded rapidly and has grown without much resistance ever since. Responsibilities and tasks grow with them. There is always more that can be done. More tools. More equipment. More.

So, did residents do this? Did they demand it? No, not exactly. But neither have residents put up much resistance. It is certainly true that once government provides a service, it becomes hard to retract. And as such, it becomes expected. We become inured to the consequences.

Rather than hold Council to account, we pray the machinery of government works. Until it is apparent that they can’t. And never could.