The OPP guy strikes again

Last Wednesday the County debated a costing report from its Policing consultant. This fellow, a superannuated OPP inspector, has written, not surprisingly, a glowing report about the savings to be achieved if the County was to use the OPP to police the entire County.

Without going into the wisdom of such a move let's look at the report. To do this one has to understand the way policing is funded. Rural communities (the County has five of them) get subsidies for policing (OMPF grants). This was a Mike Harris trick to make it appear that everybody pays for policing costs - it was a sham. They took away the free policing, replaced it with a fee and then gave out grants to offset the fee. Urban municipalities do not qualify for the grants and that's why their policing costs are on average 100% higher than the rurals (Oh did I mention that the standard of response is much lower for the rurals too?).

Mr Watkins has written a report that is of his usual standard, that is slanted to the prevailing feeling, i.e. isn't the OPP good and the others very expensive. Also he has laid himself open to previous allegations of bias with this report as it glosses over a couple of very important items. But back to the report. The really important stuff is on pages 45 to 48 - the costing tables. This is where Cobourg and Port Hope really get screwed.

County services have always been on a shared costing basis, Cobourg has the smallest amount of County roads yet pays the most to maintain the whole system. Cobourg has the most ambulance calls yet doesn't pay a surcharge for it - shared costs based on the County levy. But the recommendation of this report is that Cobourg pays more than the others because of a principle called "Fee for service with rural adjustment" What that means is that Cobourg gets to pour money into the rurals again!

Bottom line is that if the costing was done based on the County levy Cobourg would save $2.6 million and under the recommendation it would only save $1.9 million. Guess where the rest went to? The boonies that's where! Alnwick-Haldimand would see a rise if they paid according to the levy by $259,109 and with the recommendation would save $116.381. In fact in the recommendation calls for all of the municipalities that are now policed by OPP to save money.

So by incorporating urban policing into the rural system all costs go down and the urbans lose savings so how about this suggestion leave the policing costs the same as last year for the rurals and give the urbans the rest of the money.

This report needs a careful examination but some of the information is missing (the present actual police costs for example) and the report has been written in such a way to discourage that examination and presents the case for the switch very well, glossing over the massive problem of severances and collective agreements. After all if the majority is going to get huge cost savings at the expense of the minority who wouldn't vote for it?

So the urbans get screwed again and the boonikins laugh all the way to the bank and in the process the community loses a large part of its local culture. Well wasn't that the idea of the neo-cons - "There is no such thing as community" - Margaret Thatcher. This idea of free policing is one of the last policies of Mike Harris that has to be overturned. And this County wide switch will not do it.

Let's scan the entrails

The election is over - anybody notice it in the first place. What a bore and snoozefest. Snippets below

• Did the Tory campaign ever get off the ground, apart from being sabotaged by the central campaign Cathy Galt's team suffered greatly.
• Firstly the vicious nomination battles split the party and left the Cambellford rump running the party. Unfortunately seven people can't run a party.
• Secondly you have to know where you are going and have some organisation, filing the nomination papers with only three hours to go is a good sign that you either couldn't get 100 people to sign the papers or you were completely disorganised.
  
• The loss of 8 points in the polls now demonstrates that the local riding association has to rebuild but in which direction - Cambellford and the hicks or Cobourg/Port Hope with the Bill Davis leftovers?
  
• Loooo and his fiberals are crowing a lot but why; they had 96 votes less than last time. What a water treader!
• The greens did well getting another 3,181 votes than last time but will they stick or were they POd tory votes, they, the greens, don't care and will float off into lala land thinking that they are on a winning track. I just hope that their new voters don't look at the economic policies or else they will leave as fast as they came.
• The Ndippers also did well, with a very good candidate, getting another 1,371 votes and moving up 2% points over last time.
  

So what can we expect in the next four years? Nothing that hasn't happened over the last four, in other words bland and boring politics that will ignore the real issue of our area. Rising property taxes is the killer issue and nobody is looking to the root cause. Nobody will want to upset the municipal apple cart and dismantle the fiefdoms of Northumberland. Municipal redundancy and duplication is the problem here and we don't solve it by allowing the County to expand a bloated bureaucracy and keep the fiefdoms. New land use policies and planning for the shifting demographic that cannot take up the slack of reduced industrial taxation, caused by the high dollar and deindustrialisation, with their high property taxes and coming user fees, has to take place from the Central government. We know that the Barons of Northumberland (the seven mayoral dwarfs) cannot do this for parochial reasons so Premier McGuinty has do it for them. But he won't and so in four years time the electoral issue will be property tax reform.

This really upsets some people.
The staggered traffic lights at the beer store/No frills corner are perplexing, especially for the drivers sitting behind bozos who don't know how to navigate this large intersection. I even saw one frustrated driver sitting in the Beer Store Rd drive in the outside lane all the way around the other drivers sitting in the Division St lanes just to show the bozos how to get through the intersection. It's simple folks - if you have a green you keep on driving. Perhaps traffic Engineer Ted MacDonald should be stationed at the intersection and be ready to jump into traffic, like a squeegee kid, just to tell the bozo who stops on the red, instead of going on through, what to do. After all wouldn't a "No Left turn" sign positioned in front of the Park St. intersection have done the job of controlling traffic and would have been a lot cheaper than new lights?

This should upset people
MP Garth Turner has published here a story about the Conservative party's data mining operations. Very interesting and bit freaky, the Harpercrits making enemies lists and noting info about joe blow. Another instance of 1984 coming around to haunt us.

Watch cable 10 tonight (Wednesday)

I have been allowed to participate on the cable election coverage, I know it's a surprise to me after my success last year covering the municipal election, but I'll be my usual irascible self. The show will start at 9pm cable 10

And people will still think the government is not out to get you

All defenders of liberty should read thisThe UK government trumpets free speech while trampling on it

The debate continues ad nauseum

As noted in the previous post a resolution to reject the frink tenders is on the agenda for the next Cobourg Council meeting. There is also a formality, for Council, a letter from Malcolm Wardman is placed on the agenda and then consigned to the bureaucratic garbage bin - it is accepted as information (in other words Councillors may read it if they want to and then are allowed to forget it ever existed). The letter is not attached to the agenda but we have obtained a copy and it is here as well some of the remarks of the correspondent (not Malcolm Wardman) are noted below; the best part of the present argument is bolded - a very good question and something that the four dead white men should be held accountable for, I think it works out to $625,000 taxpayers dollars they have personally wasted.

"Hello Ben:
Thanks for staying on top of the frink story.Your readers may be interested in the attached early version of a letter signed by Malcolm Wardman. Apparently the Town has agreed to read the final version of his letter out loud at Tuesday’s council meeting. Hopefully it will be published in Tuesday’s Cobourg Daily Star. I believe that it also has been submitted to Northumberland News.

It points out that the lowest frink bid of $1.65M is only part of the story. There’s a potential extra $350,000 to be paid by the taxpayers, bringing the total to as much as $2M. This includes about $150,000 to Totten Sims Hubicki and an estimated $200,000 for overruns and items either left out of the tender or mentioned in the tender but not bid on.

Your readers may not be aware that the entire cost of developing the park to date is about $2.5M. This includes acquiring the property; completing the remediation of it; building the harbour wall, parking lots and related walkways; opening up and landscaping around the old creek; and building the oval paver walkways and installing the drainage system for the natural rink.

If the frink project somehow goes ahead, however, the total cost of the park will approach $5M.

This means that we would be almost doubling the cost of the park simply to install a miniscule patch of ice. How can this possibly be justified?"

The correspondent goes on to say that they decided to have Malcolm represent them as he has the same qualifications - a P. Eng., as the Town's Director of Engineering. That does knock down the argument that the objectors don't have the expertise to challenge the Town!
As titled the debate continues.

Another story
Chris Pelletier has set up a web site here a slice of life in Northumberland County and having more time on his hands than us has kept on top of local issues with wire stories, one of his links is about the advance polls here
Now is that a good figure or a bad one?

I guess that Bob (I'm in charge) Spooner is off the hook!

a snippet from the Council agenda for Tuesday evening,
Recommendation:
"That the tenders for Rotary Waterfront Fountain Rink improvements be rejected and staff be directed to review the tender documents to investigate the feasibility of re-tendering in December 2007/January 2008 with construction in 2008." What a bombshell! It seems that the four dead white guys just won't give up. What do they know that the rest of us don't about the future tenders and just how much can they take out of the specifications to get below the magic number of $1.4 million?

But what does this do to BS's credibility? Whatever cred. he has left will wither on the vine after the next episode. The unfortunate aspect of all of this is that it ties up the provincial grant for a few more months denying real progress on the facility that most citizens will support - the community centre. All we can hope for is that the tories win and take back the wasted provincial money [fat chance of that - ed.]

Any predictions for the election?

Here's mine. The Tories will win - just. The vote will be way down and the base vote will count. The Greens are picking up disaffected liberals thus allowing the tories to squeak in, the NDP are picking up more than the base vote of previous years, thus exacerbating the swing to the tories by means of the liberal lost votes. This riding will defy the liberal swing and go blue, maybe on a recount.

Comments??

The BIG election question!

We are in the last stages of the election and I cannot understand how any thinking voter has not taken the Green party to task for its bizarre fiscal policy. They propose, correct me if I am wrong, to eliminate all progressive taxation and replace it with consumption and pollution taxes. In the case of Ontario I believe that the budget is about 80 Billion dollars, Where in tarnation do they think that there is the potential to tax polluters, without driving the economy into the ground, and enough consumption to raise the money needed to run the province?

If anybody can explain this to me in three sentences please do so now or I will have to describe the policy with many more harsher adjectives than bizarre.

Emails are flying fast and furiously.

The tenders for the "frink" were opened today and the opponents of the scheme are chortling with great glee. One of the emails reads:

Hello All,
The tenders were opened today and GUESS WHAT? The lowest bid is $1,667,300 and the highest is $1,765,327! There were 5 bidders. In addition to these numbers, we have to add such things as $150K to TSH for project management work, the Zamboni itself, the cost of other parts of the project performed by others outside the main tender, and the cost of benches and misc. stuff that the town would place there. I guess the total cost to be in the order of $2.25M.

Now the hottest question of the day is, "What will Bob (I'm in charge) Spooner do as he has stated, rather foolishly and very publicly, that he would not vote for it "If it comes in at more than $1.4 million"?

So who is dragging their feet?

After the appearance of Rod Baker and the ad-hoc citizens committee, that is pushing for the creation of a Multi Use Recreation Facility (MURF), last week, Council said what a wonderful idea, we're in charge and we'll call on you to help. Most of the population thought that common sense had prevailed at last and looked forward to leaving the Frink in it's present state and moving on to the planning of a MURF.

But Council this week proved that last week was then and this is now. When Councilor Frost, this week, rose to make a motion to move the money for the Frink into a community centre plan all hell broke loose. The Mayor accused him of delaying the Frink project, three of the four dead white men stood by and refused to do anything other than say "full speed ahead" and the public is really confused now.

So now the question becomes, "What is so bloody important about a fountain in the park?"

So look at the problem now, we still have an opposition to the fountain, we will spend $1.3 million of the Provinces money and Lord knows how much of our money, and we will still need a MURF. So I still say that the simplest way to do this is to take the $1.3 add in the proposed $2.5 (Seniors Centre) and take out a mortgage on the donated land at the old Tannery site and we can build a MURF in one year. Not all the site will be needed for a MURF sell the residue to pay for the MURF - what's wrong with this idea - apart from the fact that the brains trust on the Council never thought of it first!!