Unexplainable

A Times reader called from Picton Thursday morning looking for an explanation. The 78-year-old resident wanted to know how council could ignore the direction given to them by the question on the ballot related to the size of council.

She hoped that since I had witnessed council toss aside that direction and the recommendation of the Citizens’ Assembly I might be able to explain it to her—how they could so casually ignore the wishes of the voters.

I suggested that some councillors had simply never wanted any change at all. From their point of view, the ballot question and the resulting direction from the people was an unwelcome intrusion upon their authority. The only election result that matters, in their world view, is the one in which they receive more votes than their challengers. Once that is established, no more input, advice, feedback or opinion from residents is needed. They go deaf for four years.

They reason that if constituents are unhappy with their decision making in the intervening years, they are free to choose someone else next time.

Other councillors don’t like the map proposed— complaining it cuts part of their community from its traditional ward. But council never got to talk about the map or consider fixes to it. The entire issue collapsed when nine councillors rejected the recommendation to reduce the size of council. Legitimate concerns with the map didn’t get discussed. Worse, it doesn’t explain why nine councillors chose to toss the entire effort and at least $25,000 into the trash pail. One councillor was unhappy with the process. He believed council could have, and should have been allowed to sort through the issue on its own—without the assistance and input of the Citizen’s Assembly. He wasn’t on council the last term when it was racked for almost two years with bitter division over this very issue.

Another councillor, likely eyeing a run for the mayor’s chair, appears to have calculated that winning the support of his council colleagues from Ameliasburgh and the agitated petitioners in the gallery was strategically wiser than listening to his constituents.

Others simply don’t believe the result from the ballot question. They note that a majority of the County electorate didn’t vote and didn’t answer the question. That means, according to this rather contorted view of democracy, that the majority are happy with the way council is structured. It means they are content to vote for one councillor in their ward while other County residents elect three. They believe people are satisfied that one councillor serves 500 electors in one ward, while just down the Loyalist Parkway a single councillor serves nearly 2,000 voters.

Of course, by this absurd standard, no council member holds a legitimate claim to his or her own seat at Shire Hall, since none attracted more than half the eligible vote in the 2010 election. Most of the successful candidates barely mustered a third of the eligible vote. One Picton councillor earned just 16 per cent of the votes eligible to be cast in 2010. Perhaps his vote shouldn’t be binding either.

The 78-year-old Picton resident says she won’t vote again in a municipal election. She knows now her local council isn’t listening—or doesn’t care what she thinks. She’s done with local politics because she feels powerless to make a difference.

A day after jettisoning the size of council discussion a committee of council was back at work. A Carrying Place resident didn’t like the way his ditch was maintained. Further probing revealed it wasn’t really his ditch he was worried about—though that could be touched up a bit—it was the ditch of neighbouring properties that emptied into a wetland area. He wanted the municipality to clean up the neighbouring ditch and maintain it.

How this matter found its way to council is worrying all unto its own. The municipality employs folks whose job it is to concern themselves with ditches, roads and such. Yet for 45 minutes the debate over this resident’s ditch went round and round the council table. Sixteen members. Sixteen points of view. Sixteen questions. Sixteen answers. There was no particular policy implication in the discussion—no wider significance. Just a guy complaining about his ditch

But it is just this kind of Judge Judy type of council meeting that some councillors thrive upon. Countless hours are spent on matters that have no more resonance to or impact upon County residents as a whole than this individual’s ditch. Meanwhile, issues such as the ongoing update to the County’s official plan—a document that will shape and define this community in a vast number of ways for years to come—get virtually no air time around the horseshoe at all.

Why should council be smaller? Perhaps councillors would stop indulging their fetish to meddle in the day-to-day management of the municipality. Perhaps they would be compelled to stop wasting their own time and instead focus on governing—refining policies and procedures, overseeing budgets, nurturing the local economy and planning for the future. Perhaps a smaller council would do the job we sent them to do.

rick@wellingtontimes.ca