A guest post

Dean Peacock

New advertising slogan:
"Cobourg,Ontario... Please pack up, leave and don't forget your welcome mat!"

In response to the latest article and editorial in the Northumberland News (March 11,2010 Edition) about the ongoing saga with Victoria Beach and Park, I think it would be wise for the city leaders (elders) to revisit the town slogan and maybe consider changing to the one I have provided above. Or: "Town(Country Club) closed for members only. Please take your business, your jobs, tax dollars and invest somewhere else." Maybe even: "Let's not be polite unless you are white."

I bet you would be really surprised to learn that my family and I are new residents in Cobourg. We moved here in September after throughly enjoying our visits during, what I have since learned, were the two busiest long weekends of the year. King Street was alive; the beach was full; children, from toddler to teen, were everywhere playing and just downright enjoying themselves. A great place, we thought, to bring a family of two preschoolers and one part time teen. A place to play and a place to watch them all grow into adulthood. Well... Baa daa ding ding... ding ding ding!

I do not buy the arguments that the residents here use as an excuse. Like "... It is too crowded forthe residents to enjoy their beach" or "...they leave all their garbage behind" and " ... they don't spend any money."

Come on now. This is a spectacular beach in Cobourg. It has always been one of the great joys of all cultures around the world to pack a picnic and snacks so that a family can spend a relaxing and inexpensive day bonding with the sand between their toes. And leave their garbage behind-hopefully in the receptacles that are provided!

As for suggestions that we should charge for admittance for visitors (not locals, of course) like they do at Presqu'ile. Hmm... How's this for an idea. How about we turn the area into a Provincial Park, like Presqu'ile, and have the Government buy up a fair chunk of the beach front housing(at Government assessed values) to make room for more green space and parking. This concept certainly will give the opportunity to charge for usage. Unfortunately, to be fair, we would all have to pay to have our day in the sun.

Visitors do spend money in this town when they visit. We did. We found a nice coffee shop, had a nice dinner, and bought some gas (a Cobourg pet peeve I've heard that I had to throw in) for the trek back to civilization. I would suggest the real penny pinchers are the locals.

As I go for my almost nightly walk through the downtown core it always shocks me on what a ghost town it is. The clock turns five, the streets are empty, and most of the bar staff do not know what to do with themselves. And in the day, unless it is sunny and warm, the area is only slightly more active.

If you truly, honestly feel that the local merchants are getting shafted then get out there and support all of them. Get the town to support them. Revitalize the area. Give them tax incentives, grants, so that they can renovate to improve their chances for success. I think there are only two or three places in the core I have not been in since relocating here. With that, there are maybe only a half dozen places I would take guests to. The majority are eye sores inside and out. Some places smell and have the look of the local ghosts still sucking back a two pack a day habit. The LCBO stinks of rotten stale booze probably from a pallet of stubbies being knocked over late in the seventies. This is what the tourists(the enemy), visitors, business leaders... are noticing and telling others. Clean the area, spend some money, or close it down for good.

I'm guessing some(most) of you are wondering why we are still here. Well... my wife loves the beach,my children love the beach, and gosh darn it, I love the beach too. The majority of my forty plus years of life have been spent within walking distance of a beach and I cannot see that ever changing. So we will watch closely how this all plays out. We will either vacate the area and contribute to the continuation of stagnant growth, or...

Dean for Mayor !!!

(catchy, isn't it!?)

Just what are we doing here?

It seems to me that everybody wants to do the same thing but doesn't quite know the best way. Plenty of people want to protest outside the hospital, some want to protest outside of Lou Rinaldi's office, Some are going to look at LHIN stooges whilst they follow Ministry of Health dictates and approve plans also drawn up by bureaucracy following Ministry dictates and the bottom line is that local services are being cut, leaving citizens with the prospect of having to pay for what were once free services.

The contradiction in this is best expressed by Bill Patchett being heard saying, "I don't agree with picketing Lou Rinaldi's office he is working to save healthcare" Well until Lou actually gets down and dirty with the people waving signs and telling them he will opposes any mandated cuts in the legislature nobody will believe him. Meanwhile we have many local people, who have never been in a demo before, thoroughly committed to protesting.

We need focus people! The meeting on Thursday evening may pull people together but at the moment it is still without identifiable leadership. Two Cobourg councillors, Frost and Mutton, were at the OHC meeting last week, how many more have got off their duffs to help?

Where is the Mayor in this? Cobourg Council has staked its future on the Hospital as a economic driver, it has sunk millions into the construction, for it to abdicate its position now would be scandalous.

The point has to be made that despite cutting 30 beds and up to 45 jobs we have to concentrate on the fact that services are being cut, take the rehab for example, where is Joe Lunchbucket or Mary Pensioner going to get the $100 for the first consultation and the additional $75 for each visit to get post operative care? This situation is not about jobs it is about the cost of future care. If we keep focusing on the jobs argument it will be lost, nobody has sympathy for those earning better than average wages any more, but concentrating on the cost of out-sourced healthcare might strike a chord.

So we at the BurdReport see it this way: go to the meeting on Thursday and see who wants to lead and what issues emerge as the ones to act on.

We will be watching. Your comments are important as yet there is no community forum to discuss these issues, you can do it here.

Insidious Seductions by Bureaucrats

Anyone trying to understand how the top management of organizations get away with their shameless antics should check out the old British television series, "Yes Minister", and later "Yes Prime Minister". Books were produced too and are available in libraries.

When we first meet hapless, newly elected MP Hacker, his civil servant equivalent is a smooth and cunning experienced mandarin named Sir Humphrey Appleby. While he appears to show great deference and respect for his new boss, Appleby is really manipulating him at every turn, massaging his ego, and using subtle scare tactics to mould the MP into a malleable talking head who believes everything the mandarin tells him. Before long, MP Hacker is putty in Appleby's hands, completely convinced that Appleby knows best and will protect his interests at all cost.

Turning our attention to home, to the County of Northumberland, the public school board and the Northumberland Hills Hospital, we can see these tactics at work by the top bureaucrats of all three institutions. They coddle and flatter the elected representatives, feeding them fresh fruit and pastries and telling them over and over how important their jobs are and how well they are doing. Throw in lunch and dinner allowances, travel expenses and the occasional conference, and the elected representatives start to believe all the hyperbole being flung at them.

In the guise of being helpful they manipulate and massage, delivering a consistent message that they, the bureaucrats, are there to serve them and their needs. It can take years for an elected representative to see through the game, and many never do because they've been completely taken in. They come to depend on these wise and all-knowing administrators and wouldn't do anything to change the way things are done. They are, in fact, co-dependents.

Naturally, when it comes time to discuss salaries, the manipulation and fear factor is in overdrive. Conned into believing they have to keep raising pay or risk losing these valuable administrators, they give them everything they want.

It's been a process that I started noticing in the 80's with the public school board. Regular people I knew who were school board trustees began to think they, and the board staff, walked on water. Pay rose quickly both for trustees and the top managers once their perception of their own greatness was firmly established, and since then this insidious seduction has escalated in all large institutions, to the point where even ordinary citizens think it's normal to pay administrators and top level managers 4 or even 5 times the average Ontario wage.

It's all a con game folks, and one we need to put a stop to if we have any hope of bringing common sense back to public service. Right now, it is the non elected bureaucrats running these institutions, not the people we elected to do the job.

That has got to change, and fast. We need to elect people with a clear sense of commitment to the voters, who are too smart to be fooled by the machinations of these modern day snake oil sales persons who pass for civil servants these days.

Sunday #3 The numbers are in

Every month Statscan produces reams of numbers. One of the tables is the monthly change in employment and workforce figures. Last month the BurdReport highlighted just how much unemployment had grown in the last month; this month we look for change.

We found it - in February the workforce, in our region, decreased by 100 people, the number of people that found jobs went up by 200 and the unemployed went down by 300, 100 of the unemployed obviously gave up looking and became "discouraged workers" who are not officially counted.

The bottom line is that the regional area still has 18,100 people counted as unemployed - shameful!

Sunday #2 Don't fall for the stall

Last week the PM - SH, appointed a retired judge to decide which of the documents ordered to be produced by Parliament should be released. No, No No, Parliament ordered that documents be given to Parliament. If the opposition falls for this stalling tactice they might as well dissolve themselves and go home. It's simple Parliament makes a motion and the rest of the Country have to obey - it's the Constitution dummy!

Sunday 1 - get out your protest signs

It appears that some people don't want meetings they want action and three actions this week revolve around the NHH, local hospital.

1. Noon on Monday (tomorrow) grab a sign and get out to the Hospital Main Entrance to display your displeasure at the recent cuts.
2. Tuesday, March 16 at 2:30 pm at the LVIV Pavilion main level, 38 LVIV Boulevard, Oshawa the LHIN will be discussing the cuts and submitted budget. Join the others, led by Bill Patchett, to observe the deal going down.
3. When the LHIN meeting is done come back and organise a fightback by joining others at the Lions' Centre at 5.30pm on Thursday where a community action plan is going to be initiated.
4. Please also sign online petition by clicking on the following link:
   http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/northumberlandhillshospital/
5. Also write Foster Loucks, Chair of the Central East LHIN at centraleast@lhins.on.ca
   

We now have a chance to demonstrate to the inert politicians, where is the Mayor on this one? that people are upset. Why donate money to a losing cause, appears to be the big question.

The organizers of the Rally ask that you print off the sign and post it all over town click here for the pdf

Bet this one isn't covered under OHIP

An interesting report from Holland carried in the G&M here

Contributing to the local rumour mill

There is a persistent rumour floating around the Town that has both angered and intrigued groups of people. On one hand because the rumour concerns the largest non-profit in the Town some believe that its activities, because they are funded entirely by public donations, should be transparent and open, and others believe the opposite - it may be funded by public money (donations) but it is a private organization and the way they run things is their affair.

Well where the rubber hits the road, in this case is the rumour - "Did the United Way give the CAO a $10,000 raise?"

If it is true two or three things have happened: one is that members of the Board who disagreed with the process and the event have leaked the info from an in-camera session held earlier in the week. Two the event has enraged some prominent people in Town who are pushing the MSM to ask questions. Three asking questions of this organization is not a politically wise thing to do as the CAO is a major player in ALL the activities in this community and payback would be a problem.

Finally why did the Board, if it is true, award the CAO a $10K raise when the heavy lifting of the recently successful campaign was done by Bill Patchett? One reason being floated was the fact that Board was faced with the prospect of the CAO moving to an open job in Peterborough. So - let her go and start fresh, It was only through the efforts of Mr Patchett that an extra $250,000 was raised after losing $100K in checkoffs caused by layoffs.

Let's kill or confirm the rumour - have the UW issue a statement confirming or denying the tale.

Yesterday may the start of something

A panel of investigators came to Town looking for local symptoms. Health Care cuts and the impact on local communities was on the agenda: "Tell us what is going on in Northumberland!". The community responded - over 100 people came out to see what was going on and some gave their opinion, stories and pleas, in public for the record. The Panel, part of the Ontario Health Coalition's mandate, was out to see what was really going on the delivery, and reallocation of, local health care.In a briefing note, click here to read it, the Coalition has collected, from public sources (as the MoH has not been forthcoming with requests for information), a collection of bad news. All of the Local Heath Integrated Networks (LHINs) have been following the same formula - cut hospital resources by 1% from last year. The effect has been devastating and predictable. Communities have lost services and more damaging, the services that remain but have been shifted to the community, are not free anymore.

A lineup of local people stood and spoke about their issues: Dawn Forster spoke about being a Care-Giver, with llittle support now, let alone in the future when in-hospital rehab services will be gone. Pat Cory spoke about the impact of the cuts on him, as a volunteer still healthy but wary because he moved here to be near the new hospital.

Deb O'Connor spoke about the effect of the cuts on the poor, who have, because of inadequate income have disproportionately higher levels of bad health and therefore use the hospital more than other groups - no money - no services - no health! The president of the local Nurses Union spoke, predictably about the impact of losing 30 nursing positions, likewise the president of the local CUPE unit said that because of the balancing of the cuts the job losses will be more like 45 jobs lost.

The end result will be a 20% downsizing in hospital resources and up to 45 well paying jobs lost.

It should be noted that very few solutions were proposed but in a report today the major fundraiser for the hospital - Bill Patchett, has announced that a group of local peole will be attending the next phase of the process, the Board meeting of the LHIN where these proposals are to be ratified.

The CAO of the hospital should be able to say he done his job - balance the budget, but the flaw in this plan is that most of the cuts will not be effective until the community resources are available. As the LHIN has not been funding Long Term Beds in the community so far how will Mr Biron be able to clear out the "bedblockers"?

Besides there is a potential for terrible abuse of the community, remember when the Developmentally Challenged were moved out of D'Arcy Place, and other institutions? The community was supposed to have community resources in place before the move - that worked out well didn't it?

In an ever increasing cycle of budget cuts and the need to balance the treatment of sick people you have the fixed cost of allocated money butting up against the need to treat the sick no matter what it costs. Just how many times can the health system be examined for efficiencies and methods? But as we heard yesterday the local hospital may have heard from an internally designed panel that wasn't allowed to discuss the overall picture, i.e. cutting the administration, but Mr Biron has not, according to the two local Presidents, spoken in any  way with them for their ideas. Doesn't sound very cooperative to me.

This is how to get press

With a small announcement that the "Mayor of Toronto will be holding a press conference tomorrow morning" the fourth estate went into overdrive. Miller Announcement Causing Stir | Toronto Election News
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So what will Miller say: "I've got another job and I'm off to do it, that means that you guys - Council who will have to elect another Mayor, and my opponents who can't run against my shadow, will have to be original".  Well done David keep them all guessing and in the meantime go and do good work!