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Iggy came to Town! This report from NNews tells of his visit, we will discuss the undercurrents.

• Iggy is on his summer tour and despite buses breaking down all he has to do is assemble the stamina needed to endure such a tour and be able to fend off boredom and to demonstrate enthusiasm for politics. He had better be a people person or stay away from open mics. Iggy needs more than a bus trip to sell himself, he needs to opt out of the coalition government he is part of. How many times have the Libs propped up the CRAP party in the last two years. How can he convince the voters that he is an alternative when he is an active part of Harper's coalition?
• It's about time that 'affordable housing' became a mainstay of public spending. Political scientists will tell you that good public policy includes public spending on public housing. We now know that "Council Estates" are a bad idea but mixed housing is good. There are ways to deliver good public housing and drive the economy as well. Iggy should be explaining how. In a comment this week the BR was asked to detail its ideas about the recovery and where public money should be spent. Housing, energy retrofits and grants to help homeowners to do the job should be a mainstay of the recovery. energy grants have been cancelled by Harper - why?
• Now for a bit of class warfare. Habitat for Humanity has quickly become an A-lister, one of the NGOs that government will readily support. Why? Is it because one of the first supporters was ex President Jimmy Carter - that definitely helped. In Northumberland HforH has grown rapidly and the BurdReport would suggest that one reason would be the kind of support it has garnered for the Board. HforH has worked hard to get the A list of Board members, ex-professionals and fully fledged Rotary members - good for them. But we would ask why do the elites add their weight to this NGO when others constantly look for members. Do I see a lineup for the Board on an equally successful and worthy NGO - Beyond the Blue Box? No, helping lower income people, or even working to support them is not fashionable.
• Kim Rudd has poked her head above the trenches! That's a story in itself. But where did she do it? At an Iggy event - braunnosing the Boss. Keeping a low profile and waiting for the Harpercrits to make a mistake and implode in an election is no way to build a profile. Flipping burgers at partisan BBQs won't gather any column inches so candidates have to get out, all candidates! We have three nominated opposition candidates in this riding and not a word from any of them so far in this, a two year election period.

"We have gained back all the jobs we have lost in the recession!"

That's the mantra being chanted by the government spinmeisters and Chamber of Commerce boosters. But is it true? when one looks at the latest Statscan tables it is not true in this region of the Country. Muskokas-Kawartha is still in pretty bad shape. The figures are shown below.

JUNE              2008          2010

workforce      186,600     179,800

labourforce    199,400     193,800

unemployed   12,800         14,000

Just wanted everybody to know the figures so that the next time you hear the mantra you can tell the chanter to go check the figures.

Could this happen here?

This post on a blog gives the inside scoop on an incident in Calgary where a SunMedia photo guy was involved in a punchup with the local constabulary when he was told to stop taking pics at a crime scene. The question is "could this happen on the Lakeshore?". According to local commenters the pic takers in this area have a pretty cozy relationship with the local guys in blue. Pete Fisher (NorthumberlandToday), an award winning lensman, has often been suspected of being in on busts as they ocurr, but what is wrong with that even if it does aggravate the competition? It's the pic that counts. Being a small area where we all know who the players are, it is hard to imagine such an altercation taking place between photogs/journos here. But it could where aggressive Police come into contact with aggressive pictakers. we should be so lucky that it doesn't after all I'd hate to see Ted (Amsden), or Peggy (McCarthy) or Pete facedown on the ground pinned by a cop just for doing their jobs. However with aggressive policing becoming the norm, witness the activity in Toronto lately (Israeli police training is suspected for the uniform response) how long will it be before that training will be implemented here? Not for a long time we hope.

A thought that will not go away

In the aftermath of the G20 debacle all sides are struggling to either setup a public enquiry or pat themselves on the back for a job well done. Polls show that the public view of what went on is mixed but few people wish to be overly critical of the State or its role in the operation of the Police. Toronto Council passed a motion thanking the Police and its Chief and they hope that all is now well.

But, is it? We have the Provincial Government and the Police telling us that the special conditions of the Publlic something act that allowed the searches and detainment of anybody within 5metres of the fence didn't exist. We had the fact that anybody who was deemed by the Police to be worthy of stopping was. Random search and forced self-identification was the norm and anybody in the area was forced to comply.

So how was this made possible? The Police now tell us that they have the power to search  anybody and anything "if they suspect a possible breach of the peace". So the searches are not random (that would be a Charter contravention) but lawfully executed whenever  the Police suspect something. The sooner these guys are hauled off to the the Supreme Court for a ruling the better.

Here is a video from"TRNN' The Real News Network an independent news organisation with international credibility that explains the background and issues of this problem - rights and freedoms

 Another  TRNN video with a 'rightwinger' from the "National Post" defending the actions of the situation, interesting comments and questions from the interviewer. here

Playing withthe taxpayers' money

It happens all the time, those without a lot of money become spendthrifts once they have their hands on the public till. Cobourg has the Frink and the Community Centre, both imposssible projects on their own but throw in public money and we watched the green stuff fly.

Port Hope is a very good example of "our eyes are bigger than our stomachs" syndrome. This small municipality already charges its homeowners a large sum of money to live there, some say the highest taxes are in PH, but with MPAC calculations comparitive tax rates are had to figure out. But high taxes don't seem to faze the good burghers and we have the image of a cashflow problem with the taxpayers paying for an 8million overdraft carrying charges. An (un)expected 9million over-run on the sewage treatment plant, a controversial buy of agricultural land for a business park and now the prospect of untold millions in future liability if the harbour is purchased for the 'bargain price' of $300K. Oh I forgot - if you add in the full implementation of the Police Services Board report on bringing the Service up to Provincial standards another 6million.

Yet not one word of this financial puzzle from either the incumbents or the candidates for this Fall's election. Can we presume that the citizens of PH either don't know or don't care? This we do know is that at least one member of Council is in favour of the harbour purchase even going so far as to suggest that PH buy its own dredger instead of using Cobourg's (They hate to pay for anything that comes from Cobourg!).

So with only the 'usual suspects' decrying the financial goings-on the BurdReport wonders what it will take to have a debate about this.

A very good question

As Blogspot continues to screw up the Blogosphere, despite being owned by Google and its multi-billions (you would have thought they might support some of their endeavours but I guess counting money is too important a task to split away from), a comment popped up that required more attention than it would get being buried in the comments log.

The gist of it was, "Ben can you tell us when the coordinator system came in and what was used prior to it?"  Good question.

The coordinator system came into being in 1985, when the Angus Read era came to Town. Major Angus Read, a retired Army Officer had settled in Cobourg after commanding the now closed Ordnance Depot on D'Arcy St. Fitting right into the social milieau of the cocktail set and the Rotary Club he, or others, decided that the then Mayor (who has recently died) Mac Lees was past it and needed to be replaced. In a move that I have never got to the bottom of Mac announced his retirement as Mayor after a couple of decades of public service and the Major won the election on a promise of bringing the Town into the 20th Century.

One of the first things he did, as he had a majority of new members, was to implant his style of top-down management. Making the clerk subordinate was easy, Bryan Baxter was the consummate civil servant and they produced a plan to eliminate the system of 'standing committees'. Cobourg Council used to meet every two weeks and in the other two weeks three standing committees used to meet. I can't remember the names of them but I do know that the incumbent councillors of the day used to proclaim, in their campaign literature, that they were the "Chairs" of this committee or that committee. Anyway all councillors had to be kept occupied as there more then than now. 

Back to Angus's 'efficiency drive' he had determined that items of business, usually planning and development pieces were taking too long in committees and slowing down the business of Council. A matrix was produced and it laid out who could talk to whom, who reported to whom and a councillor was given a 'portfolio' of responsibilities. Hence the coordinator system. All coordinators reported to Council about their activities to the committee of the whole, which was created to replace one of the regular Council meetings. An informal protocol was created, and it still exists today, where knowledge of each portfolio was hoarded by the coordinator and if questions were asked by another councillor it seemed to be resented by the portfolio holder and interpreted as interference. This attitude still persists today. Consequently when one approached one councillor for an answer to a general problem one would be directed to the guardian of the information. This also leads to a system of cronyism as most councillors want to achieve something, usually a staff item of little importance, votes must be cultivated so all councillors 'go along to get along'.

So the result is an atmosphere of a club of narrowly informed coordinators as a opposed to a group of well informed concillors. That's my version of the past folks please correct me if I am faulty in my institutional memory. all I know is that the present system is systemically disfunctional as far as democratic engagement goes but probably very efficient in policy delivery. But that's why we have pols and bureaucrats and never the twain should meet but as we see it has for many years as members of Council appear to be bureaucrats not politicians.

Blogger is screwing up

Readers will have trouble with comments today the google setup is not performing, i guess all they want to do is make money not a decent interface.

Sometimes it works other times not but I will try to publish them all one way or another

ben

This topic has been a nagging itch

After the G20 furore one would think that everyone would forget what happened. Unfortunately not for the dozen or so people still held in prison or the conspiracy theorists trying to expose the state's involvement in the riots . We do know that as well infiltrating the 'Black Bloc' the Police had inside plants some of them may have been 'agents-provocateurs' as they were in the Montreal riots a few years back. The investigators need help in identifying one such person.

By collecting video like this



Many questions are raised especially about the identity of the fellow allowed, by Police inaction, to jump all over the police car. This man was dressed in a snazzy flak jacket, not your normal Black Bloc issue tee-shirt and disappeared too easily into the crowd after his performance. Why wasn't he snatched up?

Anyway a blogger called "Pushed to the left and Loving it" has chronicled these problems and asks for help in identifying the man in black. Check out her website here for the story but be sure to click on her home link to get some great stuff.

Here is another horror story: let you be the judge of this one. Shouldn't have been there or wayward police?



OK here's a workaround the comment problem:
Merklin Muffley has left a new comment on your post "This topic has been a nagging itch":

|A blogger looking for answers, eh Ben. Kinda like after-the-fact citizen journalism. I wonder what a real journalist with real bona fides and a real hate on for anyone encroaching on their turf would think of that?

Maybe Christie Blatchford could let fly once again and in her own self-discrediting, ass-kissing way let us poor dummies in on what's REALLY going on out there.

(Ah....whadda I care. I'm enjoying the entirely agreeable climate of beautiful Victoria at the moment -on my way to Courtney for the VanIsle Music Fest this weekend. Nothing like a cold pint of Granville Island lager at The Bent Mast to straighten me out. Got to Victoria from Van by way of a DeHavilland Twin Otter piloted by some 19-year old kid from Glasgow with an accent so thick you couldn't understand a word he said -and my relatives are all in Paisley for chrissakes. Cheers all!)

Just what is going on here?

The local Hospice Associations are sending mixed messages, probably to the detriment of its volunteers. In a letter published in the NorthumberlandNews here, the Chair of the Campbellford Hospice extols the virtues of the organisation. Now we have a letter, sent to all the Staff and volunteers of the Hospice Associations see here on the LHIN website, proclaiming the process of "voluntary integration" of amalgamating the two Hospice Associations with the County's Community Care organisation.
Interestingly enough, on that webpage we have an announcement that 1% of the LHIN's funding will be devoted to 'community funded health providers'. so the other shoe drops and it's another Biron masterpiece. Shut down the hospital clinics - score a brownie point for an 'integration process' and attach the palliative care to the ongoing moves to the amalgamation of hospice care - score another one for an 'integration process' and now you have two big brownie points for extra hospital funds by outsourcing, closing and connecting.

Can we have it both ways?

A mighty fine comment:
"This site is packed top to bottom with complaints about Council, yet now it is discussing giving Council a pay raise."
This comment appeared as #25 in response to the post of yesterday wherein the BurdReport argued for some truth in the matter of Cobourg Council's workload and the attendant plea from Councillor Mutton to pay the council more money.
This site has faithfully chronicled the failings of the current Council and its members, as well as congratulating them from time to time on good stuff. But perhaps the last post, about the plea for more money failed to show one of the underlying complaints about the issue, the way that incumbents whine about those who consider the job should be paid more and self servingly play to ignorant electors. Jeff Lees in Port Hope did it this week by suggesting a pay freeze for Council, causing Councillor Turck to wryly observe, "It must be an election year!".
Another commenter made the point that perhaps, because all those who tell the public that they are serving the public want us to believe that then there should be no honorarium - let them serve for nothing. Another commenter made the point that because there are people on Council of independent financial means the pay should be set at $50,000 and then all other income be deducted from that - innovative.
The BurdReport's position is very clear - both the system of governing; the coordinator system, and the composition of Council is faulty. So here is the plan:

• Council should be restructured into committees of the whole for three of the four weeks in a four week cycle. Planning, Financial and Operating committees should meet weekly and feed all the issues into a Council meeting that meets every four weeks.
• The Councillors should be paid at the rate of $30.00 per hour for every hour spent on Cobourg council business. This is meant to compensate councillors giving up their evenings.
  
• The meetings should take place in the evenings to allow the public to attend, This comment was emailed to me, by a sitting member of Council, and is very telling,"Consider that to reduce staff overtime, advisory committee meetings are more and more being moved to day time or reduced in number. This directly impacts the ability of citizens to participate." Perhaps less staff should be assigned to meetings then the public and council could make their own decisions, after all aren't they supposed to set policy rather than take direction?
• The Mayor should be actively seeking new members of the public to sit on Council, most incumbents see newcomers as a threat to their existence.
• Term limits must be imposed, A successful councillor needs to regenerate, and I will promise you if the unseated councillor is introspective they will look back and see their faults.
• The Council term must be reduced to two terms of four years
  
• Elect half of the members of Council each election
• Elections must be held every other year

These suggestions may not satisfy those readers who complain that all everybody does is bitch and fail to make constructive criticism but they are a start!


The latest comments that Blogspot will not accept:

Wally Keeler has left a new comment on your post "Can we have it both ways?":
Wally Keeler disses the Northumberland News Report Card on Cobourg's town councillors.