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Navigation aids
How do we know what we know? It is an important question when making a big decision. Even when all the signposts point in one direction, we can still be led astray. Not intentionally, mind you.But through poor design, lack of context and bad assumptions we can be convinced we are headed the right way, even as we barrel toward a dead end.
How do we know, for example, that five of the County’s seven elementary schools must close? That a new school be built. Partly with our own eyes, I suppose. We can see that enrolment has declined and there are a growing number of empty classrooms. That tells us we have some overcapacity—and that over-capacity has a cost—to heat and light and maintain.
It is much harder, however, to know what enrolment will look like five or 10 years forward. So we make assumptions and look at statistics. There is a lot of grey hair in Prince Edward County; therefore it is easy to conclude the trend is toward lower enrolment. But that view can be skewed by the sample size and a moment in time. A visit to the park in Wellington last Friday night, for example, would suggest the County is teeming with babies and toddlers.
Against this context, the prospect of closing schools seems absurd.
Schools and hospitals are big capital projects. Moreover, they hold the power to shape and define the community in which they exist. Decisions about capacity must be made with the best possible information, for their impact can be devastating and long-lasting.
So we rely on experts—folks trained and experienced in gathering pertinent data and applying well-considered assumptions to compute a projection or forecast. We turn to them in the same way we use a map or a GPS navigation tool. We need someone to have considered the best course ahead.
We can, I suggest, become a bit too reliant on these tools.
For a while, early on, one of the GPS mapping applications insisted, with increasing urgency, that drivers turn right while crossing the Norris Whitney Bridge between Belleville and the County. Fortunately, no one heeded this advice. But why not? It came from an authority on navigation and guidance? Why didn’t drivers follow this instruction? The answer, of course, is that motorists could easily see and comprehend the context—and the deadly consequences of this poor advice.
What happens when the context isn’t so clear? Folks visiting Wellington, particularly from Montreal or Ottawa, regularly get treated to a cross- County adventure when using GPS navigation. They are sent on roads most of us have never travelled upon. All this to say the technology is wonderful, helpful and cool—but not entirely reliable. Nor should it be a replacement for decision- making.
Similarly, the public school board relies heavily on forecasts and models developed by consulting economists Watson & Associates in making its decisions about which schools to close. They have projected enrolment per school for 10 years. They have estimated the cost of refurbishing each school to current standards and calculated a Facilities Condition Index (FCI), a measure of the cost of renewal relative to the value of building—a way to assess the value of investing further in an existing structure, closing it or rebuilding.
Needless to say, such calculations require many, many assumptions that most of us will never see. Some will be wrong. This isn’t a criticism of the consultants—but rather an observation that the business of projections and forecasts is inherently fallible.
Remember, too, that these are the same consulting economists that prepared the projections underlying the County’s waterworks rates and development charges.
After much expense, time and resources were poured into waterworks rates in 2010, within two years it was clear we were headed in the wrong direction. Assumptions were faulty. Estimates were off. The waterworks department now swims in red ink, and another waterworks committee is busy—working with Watson & Associates— to develop another new and improved rate structure.
Similarly, it was Watson & Associates who advised the County in 2009 to peg its development charges in the upper stratosphere of such fees in the province—that soon other municipalities would catch up. It didn’t happen. The County remains tragically uncompetitive in attracting residential development partly as a result.
This isn’t the fault of Watson & Associates. These folks perform a valuable service. They provide an important analysis that can, and should, be used to guide decision- making. It can’t replace it, however.
Too often these projections and forecasts ordain an ill-considered plan, absolving decision-makers of the hard work of weighing and considering the various alternatives and toiling toward a sound conclusion based on the evidence and the context. It is far too easy to lean on consultants to make hard decisions for us. Besides, we then have someone to blame when it all goes wrong.
Over the next days and weeks, I urge everyone who cares about their community school, or the prospect of their toddler weaving through a gauntlet of teenaged smokers to and from the bus each day, to examine the assumptions that underlie the decision to close your school. Satisfy yourself that the projections are sound and reasonable. If not, challenge the board; insist that it validate its assumptions and methodology so that it makes sense to you.
Two quick points. The County has invested heavily and effectively marketing this community as a place to settle and to raise a family. In the context of Eastern Ontario, it has done a phenomenal job of doing that. Most of these settlers, so far, might be categorized as early adopters—borrowing terminology from the marketing lexicon. That would suggest a much larger wave is right behind them. Add to this the pressure on house prices in the GTA and now Durham and further east— it is reasonable to assume the park full of babies and toddlers on Friday is an early indicator, rather than an anomaly. If so, the assumptions for the County must be taken off the table.
The school board must, nevertheless, make some hard decisions. It needs to do so cautiously, guided by projections and expert advice, but ultimately by listening to the community and its leaders. Something it hasn’t done well, so far.
Better to miss the turn than drive off the bridge.
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