Tag: limited government

Being on Council

(Published in the NGTimes, Aug 11, 2022)

Friends, family and more recently, prospective candidates for Council have asked me, “What’s it like?”

Being on Council is challenging. Rewarding but challenging. Of all the roles a Councillor plays; Policymaker, Steward, Leader, Representative, it’s the representative role that’s the most challenging and contentious, in my opinion. This article attempts to illustrate why.

How do you balance the wants, needs and expectations of a single resident, small groups of residents or business owners against those of the entire community? Is it simply a case of the majority rules? How do you address competing interests? Do you use expensive direct democracy tools like referendums, plebiscites, or cheaper less accurate surveys to inform your decisions?

In North Grenville, we leave decisions on critical issues up to the judgement of five so-called representatives whom we elect to Council every four years. Five individuals with different backgrounds, interests, life experiences and by extension, different understandings of the larger community they’ve been elected to represent. They don’t always agree and so, ultimately it comes to a vote.

Election to Council has required a much broader understanding of the issues that impact this municipality as a whole. My focus has been on making decisions that are based on evidence rather than ideology or personal bias. It’s taken diligence and certain amount of self-reflection to try to get it right. Having advice and support from competent professional staff at the municipality certainly helps. Maintaining respectful communication and conferring with my Council colleagues has also been key to arriving at workable solutions to complex problems.

Engaging with the broader public daily, one quickly becomes aware of the often-competing interests and expectations that residents and business owners have. Unpacking, assessing, and addressing those interests and expectations has been one of the biggest challenges I’ve experienced being on Council. Making judgements about what best serves the common good can be tricky; decisions are sometimes very unpopular.

To further complicate things, the idea of a collective or common good is being threatened, in my opinion. Besides being imperfect and messy, democracy is inherently fragile. Defining what holds people together in an increasingly diverse and secular community is getting more difficult. Social media is fundamentally transforming the very idea of community. People increasingly self-segregate into virtual communities of like-minded individuals in ways that can make geographic boundaries less relevant.

Social media has also become an influential medium in how residents experience local politics and form candidate preferences. How do you take the measure of a person’s character if you never actually meet them face to face? How do you know they’ll make the right decisions for you and your community? For that matter, what is “your community”?

Luckily, North Grenville suffers less than other municipalities, in my mind, as it still possesses strong values of generosity, volunteerism and community spirit. Unfortunately, the ability to think beyond immediate personal circumstances is what I see lacking in more and more people.

For me there’s an intrinsic value in being involved with different community and non-profit groups. It’s wonderful to see what a group of people can accomplish if they have a common purpose or a shared goal. I find that energizing and invigorating. Identifying a common purpose and a way forward for over 17,000 residents and business owners, however, is a different journey. The recent Community Strategic Plan was a laudable attempt and perhaps the only legitimate document the next Council will have for guidance in pursuing shared goals.

I’ve concluded there is no single, correct approach to fulfilling the representative role of a Councillor. Being on Council requires making decisions that are often difficult and frequently unpopular. It requires having confidence in your own judgement; in trusting your gut; in having confidence that you’ve truly explored and considered what’s best for the common good, as you define it. I found the role of representative to be challenging.

To the curious, including prospective candidates for election to Council, I say, having the sense that you’ve made the right decisions for the right reasons for the community can feel extremely rewarding, at least for me it has. Best of luck to everyone in the choices you’ll be making.

Public Works Investments

Published in the NG Times (July, 2019)

In the past eight months as the Council Liaison to Public Works I’ve come to appreciate both the scale and scope of the work that a relatively small number of staff undertake on behalf of the residents of North Grenville. I’ve learned a great deal about what the Public Works department does, how it does it and how it’s paid for. I’m still learning. I thought I’d share some of the cost saving measures the department has undertaken that have saved the Municipality hundreds of thousands of dollars.

First of all, as I mentioned, Public Works does a lot with a little; it continually looks to optimize it’s operations. For example, this winter a resident wrote me a humourous email questioning  the route that the snowplow took after every snowfall. The route resulted in more snow piled on his side of the road – could it not be reversed (ie. his side plowed first and the opposite side plowed last); even once in awhile? When it was explained that the route the plow takes is determined by minimizing the distance travelled, gas used and by eliminating switchbacks, he saw the logic and understood (right, Peter?). At first glance Public Works operations may not make sense to you but there’s always method in the madness. It’s hard to put a number to the amount of savings that this particular practice has produced over the years but here are three items that are easier to quantify in terms of savings:

1) LED Cobra-head Streetlights lower hydro costs.

With the help of a successful grant application to the Save on Energy Program, Public Works was able to jump start the replacement of bulbs in each of it’s 377 cobra-head street lights. With all of the lights replaced with LEDs, the associated hydro costs have been reduced by approximately $53,000 each and every year.

2) Waste Water Treatment plant anaerobic digester lowers heating costs.

Anaerobic digesters where part of the original plant construction, they break down biodegradable material during the waste water treatment process. The Public Works department optimized their use to heat the plant by using the recovered methane in place of natural gas. Staff recall previous budget numbers were in excess of $100,000 for the heating costs at the plant. (No financial details are available prior to 2006 based on an ironically titled file retention policy) Now they are considerably less; over the past five years those costs have fluctuated between $18,000 and $24,000 per year.

3) Hiring an in-house mechanic who services Public Works and Fire Services results in many savings.

Prior to the hiring of a full time mechanic, Public Works vehicle maintenance alone was $103,000 (2008); now it’s about $25,000 less (2019). Some creative sourcing of equipment and a bit of ingenuity has resulted in even more savings.

North Grenville has approximately 130 km of gravel roads that produce a lot of dust when travelled upon. It takes a lot of water to suppress it. The Oxford Mills Public Works Garage was able to build a water truck from a used trailer and two new plastic tanks at a cost of $22,442. The cost of purchasing a customized vehicle would have been in the neighbourhood of $100,000. The resulting vehicle now holds 28,000 litres of water. 

But the savings don’t stop there. How do you fill two 14,000 litre tanks? After a flood at a facility in Brockville, North Grenville Fire Services Fire and Public Works were able to acquire their de-commissioned pump at no cost and after repairing it put it into service. It can pump water at 4,500 litres a minute. In other words, this re-purposed pump can fill both tanks on the truck in less than ten minutes.

These just a few instances where Public Works has been able to do more with less. With one of the largest budgets of all the departments in the Municipality, being able to make wise investments, to continually optimize it’s operations and to diligently find savings where it can is essential. I hope to report some more in the future.

How to Save the Conservative Party

Andrew Coyne is my kind of conservative (whether he identifies as one or not). He writes in this article “there is no neccesary contradiction between a concern for the individual and an ideal of community.”  Limited government is government that minds its place – it’s not less government or small government, it is the creation and servant of the people.

Worth the time to read …

Source: How to Save the Conservative Party · thewalrus.ca