“Mr Chair (in a CoW meeting one addresses the Chair not the person in it), a short agenda tonight but due to the law of inverse proportion – the length of the agenda is inversely proportional to the length of the meeting, it’s going to be a long night.”
Two presentations one to a successful sports team and one from a successful local media guru. Seven motions and the usual puff announcements from each Councillor. Of the seven motions three should be worthy of debate as they are new to the public and may be controversial.
The first up is the Ad-Hoc committee on Council remuneration read it here . We wrote about it a few days ago in a post called “all that work just to maintain the status quo” . Somewhat cynical the post the post was critical of the way the committee did not get to the issue and took the easy way out and recommended that Council stay in the middle of the pay chart. The question here is: will the Councillors actually say something about the report or will they just vote to get it off the table. We know that at least one Councillor thinks the job should be full time and paid accordingly, but now that she is not running again will Councillor McCarthy tell the truth? After all there is an election coming and who wants to be tagged with voting for a hefty raise or asking for a job?
The second report is a report from the Cobourg Police Services Board called: ” Memorandum of Understanding-Business Services Unit-Non-Taxation Proceeds” Yep and the rest of the report is just as hard to read and understand check it out for yourself here. For an organisation that wants to be understood as one that communicates well this report is tough reading due to the way it is written e.g “The risk of continuity of extraordinary proceeds coupled with the preference to insulate the community from acute fluctuations in the municipal tax base results in both streams of funding (taxation and non-taxation) remaining synchronised, though independent, for their distinct purposes.” really means “we are in a risky venture and want to keep the profits separate or else taxpayers may take a hit!”
That’s the reason for this MoU. The CPSB is making a killing at the moment with its Business Unit and it may collapse at any time if the Feds or the RCMP change their operations. So a means to keep the money away from the budgeteers at City Hall has to be devised.
The third report is the memo from the Planning and Sustainability Advisory Committee that asks for a report from the CAO on how to obtain the resources to do the jobs they should have done in past years. This report “Memo – Planning Secretary RE Sustainability Resources” points out that in their efforts to direct the way to a Sustainable Cobourg the Town has to follow through on previous efforts, the Committee quotes:
On to the Coordinators’ reports and then the meeting should be over, notwithstanding additions to the Agenda.