Unfixable

Only once since amalgamation have residents been asked what they think. Officially, anyway. Shire Hall conducts plenty of surveys and consultations. More perfunctory than curious. But only once in its 26 years has a question been deemed important enough to pose on an election ballot.

In the 2010 election, voters chose from a selection of candidates for council and mayor. They were also invited to respond to the following question: Are you in favour of Council commencing a public consultation process to review the size of Council for the County of Prince Edward?

A large majority voted yes. Eighty-one per cent of respondents voted in favour of a review. But it didn’t happen. Council couldn’t muster the strength to do what the voters had asked it to do. It was too hard. It is too hard still.

Initially, Council’s response was denial. The decision of voters wasn’t technically binding because a rule in municipal law requires that for a ballot question to compel action at least 50 per cent of eligible voters must vote. No election in Prince Edward County has ever met that threshold. (Fortunately, the same rule does not apply to council members— or no one would be sitting around the table.)

Some councillors inferred from the traditionally low voter turnout that County residents were, in fact, happy with how the place was governed. But when residents began agitating, Council figured it had to do something. The most spectacular of the doomed-before-it-started projects was a Citizens’ Assembly facilitated by Queen’s professor Jonathan Rose in 2013.

Several dozen residents were selected randomly, and over a series of Saturdays that summer, they talked about County governance— priorities, challenges and opportunities. Among their recommendations was that Council winnow down to 10 council members and a mayor.

But it was dead before it arrived. Council dismissed the CA’s recommendations with scant consideration.

Finally, Council arrived at bargaining. In a deal with one of the anti-change coalition members fearful that a provincial adjudicator would impose a new governance arrangement, Council agreed to drop two council members. That was it. It was enough. It survived a quasi-judicial challenge. That is where Council is today. That was the extent of self-examination and reform. In twenty-six years.

From Council’s point of view, everything is fine. Nothing to see here. Just move along, folks.

Yet, a decade later, a trembling majority of Council remains fearful and mistrustful of its residents. A project to take a fresh look at how it governs—begun by a new council last spring—met a wall of resistance last week at a council committee meeting. So did a proposal to put another question on the ballot in the next election. Any result wouldn’t have any effect for six or seven years. But it was going nowhere. It was dead before it arrived at the committee table.

The question is, why? Why is the prospect of a fresh examination of how this community is governed causing some council members to quake in their seats? What is Council afraid of?

They are not like you and me. Council is a private Club. It infers esteem and prestige upon its members (if not a proper wage). And once you become a member of the select few, the world outside looks very different. Strange and foreign. The petty concerns of your ward or village—the things you fought for to get elected—fall away in favour of the big and important work of the Club. In this context, members look out for one another. For the Club. For the institution.

Residents become just something else to be managed. The more that residents complain, the easier it is to align with your fellow members—with the Club. It soon becomes us and them. Fourteen against the world.

So, the prospect of Council ever reforming or renewing itself will always run up against the primacy of the Club and its members. Most will always choose themselves over you. Over improvements to governance. It will never happen by their hand. It is clear that reform to this Club can only occur if imposed from above or when voters have had enough.

How do we know this is true? Consider the arguments made to deny a review.

“It will be divisive. It will be hard.”

Isn’t that the job? Isn’t it Council’s role to tackle the big, thorny challenges facing this community? Isn’t it Council’s duty to continually review its purpose and performance in a changing landscape? That the process might be difficult is simply the plea of folks who don’t want to do the work.

Others argue that residents don’t care how the place is governed—that they only care about roads and doctors. (How is that going?) It turns out that when you ask folks what they think and then choose to ignore them, they are reluctant to participate in the process—save for the pointy thing facing them directly. It is hard to engage your community in the democratic project when you don’t actually care what they think.

Sadly, some of those who voted against a review didn’t say anything at all. They mostly sat quietly, waiting for it all to be over. For the spotlight to be aimed somewhere other than at them.

rick@wellingtontimes.ca