What’s the rush”

I wrote a column for this issue, and then I read Rick Conroy’s Comment last week, and trashed my column. He said what I said. Rick and I are not always on the same side, but he brought up things that have been bothering me. Rick is well-researched, and has details and percentages, and cost-flow projections I don’t understand. So if you didn’t make it through his Comment let me highlight something.

ARE WE IN A WINDSTORM?
Things happen so fast now that we often react, before we reason. Council’s whole “enormous growth is coming and we need to move into our storm shelters and brace ourselves for the tornado of future growth,” is kind of like: “We think something may happen, so we want to spend a lot of money in case that something may happen.”

This, to me, is not good planning. It is based on guesses about our future; hopes it might happen. If it happens, it will cost us a lot of money. If it doesn’t happen, it will cost us a lot of money.

This does not sit well with me. And I’ll tell you why.

THINGS CHANGE
When this growth plan was formed, it was before Covid. Back then, Toronto buyers were salivating for County properties. People who bought their homes for $100K were looking at resale values of a million plus. That was then; this is now.

As Rick pointed out, the buying market has cooled, yet the County is forging ahead with huge expectations, with no foundation left to support it.

As a business owner, I know if I work with old information, it will not play out for me. I have Jan and Peggy to push me forward. Things change every day. They slap me in the head to note the changes, and it makes my business better.

This is what the County needs to learn. I have two people who know what’s going on, and they drag me kicking and screaming into the present. County has so many loads of people, they can’t figure anything out. If you’ve approached Shire Hall at any time in your life—other than to buy garbage tags—it’s a horrible mess in there.

Nobody seems to know who is responsible for anything. Locating anyone gives you a voice mail into some infinite black hole. I know they’re busy, but they have major structural problems. Plus they switch people on a regular basis, so the ONE person who knows what’s going on is replaced by someone who does not.

These are the admin people, and I’ve dealt with a number of them who know their stuff. Then they’re gone … somewhere. The same switcheroo happens with Council itself every once in a while. What they see is what we get. Things change.

TO THE POINT
Sometimes you follow a path. It looks like a good one. And you stick to it. I’ve learned that sticking to a path is not the way to go. Sometimes I get caught up in what needs to be done, and I don’t look to the right or left, I just run along.

This, I believe, is what has happened to Council. I can’t dishonour them, because I’ve done this time and time again. When you build a plan, the plan becomes ‘the thing’ and everything that follows is designed to meet the plan.

I never stopped to say, “Is this still the right plan?” Often it was not. Because I had to stop myself, and reassess the plan that was great … before everything changed.

Back at the onset of Covid, and the horror of Toronto press telling people to “go to the County,” though no businesses or port-a-potties were open … that was kind of a lesson. Expect this, and then, “What the hell is this?”

THINGS CHANGE, PART 2
Everything around us is moving at hyperspeed. Predictions are a ridiculous exercise for all of us. It’s like an ice cream cone: When you get it, it looks great. In 15 minutes it’s a sloppy mess. The answer is to eat it fast.

This is what Council does not understand. They are not built for fast. If you’re working with a ten-year-old ice cream cone, you have nothing left but a soggy cone no one wants to eat.

Wow! I thought I was almost out of weird analogies!

In layman’s terms: The County, our province and our whole country bases its future on old information, and old projections, in a world that is moving at hyperspeed, and changing every minute. It’s like a turtle trying to catch a butterfly. (Two weird analogies in one column! Perhaps a record?)

Home buying and construction is slowing, according to reports, but we are stuck in a ‘Big Growth’ dream that is five or ten years old. Dropping big money into a dream of future major expansion simply does not acknowledge how quickly modern moods change.

Pre-Covid, we were hot. Now we are not. Not our fault, but a new market situation that Council has not yet embraced. Turtle and butterfly.

Their ‘magic projection into the future’ people may be good, but they’re pretty much as smart as us. We see what we see. The ‘magic’ people see what we saw in 2019. I don’t believe they’ve caught up with what we see now.

PLANNING

Planning is tough. I get that. I suspect it’s mostly looking at maps of the County, and using markers to highlight places that can be developed and expanded, with minimal backlash from neighbouring homes.

But ‘Planning’ is really a chess game, if you’re looking at a map, and that’s all you see. Planning is using old projections—which were already old when they used them—and taking a wild guess at our future, perhaps with the help of a clairvoyant.

Over the years, County has been late to the game— not anticipating monster growth in tourism—despite the fact that their own economic development department was driving it hard. The only thing worse is laying down a big bet in a poker game before the cards are even dealt.

Here’s what it comes down to: We didn’t plan for success. When the tourists first flooded in, we had no public washrooms, few accommodations, and no infrastructure to support them. Bad planning. Things changed, as they do, and we caught up to the demand.

Most of us spend our lives just dealing with what we have in front of us. We leave planning to others, and then complain because we don’t agree with their decisions. This does not work for anyone.

I get a load of info from County, and they try to tell me stuff. But they speak in a language that puts me into a coma after the first line. If we move ahead, I suggest: Talk to yourselves in Government Speak; talk to the rest of us as if we’re normal humans. Also, lose the “We’re talking to you from up here to you, the lowly plebians.”

Wonder why your ‘presentations’ don’t draw community response? You’re all output; no input. What’s the point in showing up?

countymag@bellnet.ca