Cobourg Council is dysfunctional

More evidence that Cobourg Council is a law unto itself and being ruled by four dead white men and presided over by a Mayor more interested in his legacy hit the public domain this past week.

In theory Cobourg is governed by the Council which has divided the workload into little fiefdoms called "portfolios" - planning, safety, public works, parks etc. In practise this means that each councillor can really only look after the kingdom and ignore what the others are doing. This lazy and inefficient practice has been going on for years. But with a recent election and the imposition, by the public, of the top vote getter being given the most important portfolio - planning, the old way has changed slightly. Now the four dead white men in their chauvinistic way have decided not only will they look after their own little fiefdom they will look after the planning portfolio as well.

Two issues bring this practice to light: one is the announcement of a public meeting to discuss the official review of the Official Plan ad the other is the ongoing definition of the harbourfront park and the planned changes to it. The first issue - the review of the OP, a dispute has arisen between the old king of planning and the incumbent. Dean McCaughey, who was the biggest loser in the last election and now sulks in Public Works and doesn't do committee work, says it should be a very brief meeting because it is only a perfunctory formality to have this meeting, Miriam Mutton disagrees and says that members of the public should be free to speak about their thoughts on the new OP. The second issue is more fundamental and shows that the losers (the four dead white guys) really want to put the boots to the new person who is a woman! Ms Mutton takes the broad view that because the location and planning of the harbourfront area is integrated and therefore changes to one component affects the larger area it is a planning matter in the widest sense. Councillor (I used to be the Deputy Mayor and now sit on my arse and collect the money) Spooner believes that because the area is called Rotary waterfront park, totally diminishing the good name of Dr. Bob Scott, after which the area is named, is in the Parks portfolio and therefore Ms Mutton is "grandstanding" by uttering an opinion.

Putting these issues together and adding in the fact that the Coordinator of planning has had her choices of committee personnel routinely savaged and her cogent and reasonable ideas ignored you could say that she really is not the master of the domain and is not getting the respect that is due her portfolio. That is tragic and cannot be tolerated. That is why the practises of the dead white men majority are continually under scrutiny and often exposed.

The conclusion is that the Council is dysfunctional because the majority of the team have decided that it can run the Town with one member on the bench!

And who says there is no Provincial election?

Click here for a peek Grants-R-Us: Home

Cobourg versus OPP another slant

In the ongoing debate about the efficiency of the OPP and the wastefulness of the Cobourg police let's look at the proposed workload and the actual (1996) and see if we will get value for the Cobourg dollar.

Cobourg has 18 frontline officers (23 total) and 5 Sgts. The OPP proposes to have 23 constables and 6 Sgts (one more than now) so be fair and say that the three OPP constables will become program officers and therefore the number of constables will be the same - 18.

Now look at the workload, it is substantially different. Cobourg responds to each complaint And the OPP will only respond to complaints of a dollar value of more than $4800, source of this the OPP Municipal Policing Framework: buried in the back under "differential response".

The upshot is that of the 4771 cases responded to last year by the Cobourg Police, 1001 of them would not be followed up by the OPP under the differential response.

So we now have the same number of officers, and an extra Sgt. doing 20% less work - who is overcharging now?

So what about the waterfront park?

What about it? Will it add or detract from the area, will it bring people to the area thereby furnishing the downtown with a critical mass of customers, will it produce parking complaints and a whole lot of other questions. Since the whole harbourfront has been turned into a residential wasteland (what's the opposite of slums) that pleases no one, especially the people who live there and expect bucolic conditions tailored to their taste. I have no desire to visit the place and therefore what goes there is of no interest to me. But if it pleases others it will be of use but how much do I want to pay for their pleasure?

What is of interest is that whatever does go there must have the lowest maintenance costs possible - grass in the summer and plowed paths in the winter would be good. This proposal of a fountain (shades of prancing waters at the Bellagio casino in Las Vegas - take a look here for a look at real fountains), is really really expensive to maintain, and proper questions have been raised about it. $86,138 is the estimate to run it for a year. Just how tasteful will the area be when it is budgeted to sell advertising $20,000) , where and how much? The idea of a bus shelter is taking some flak but if you remove it the $21,000 grant that goes with it disappears too.

So much for so little I notice that some other commentator in Cobourg on another site notes that the Park does not have a name,well it might have soon - Delanty's folly

Hey I'll do it!

Always on the lookout for some 'ready' this item crossed the screen Blogging for dollars. So form the line at the right and I'll flog anything you want to sell, especially if the far away places have to be visited and verified, at your expense of course.

A second thought a second time

For a short while last night there was a post about the Cobourg Police Issue, but it was so faulty I took it down, so here is a replacement.

There will be two arguments that proponents will get exercised about: one is the financial side where all kinds of numbers and comparisons will be made to bolster whichever side you are on. The faultline will be just how much money is going to be saved. The second one will be a level of service argument. Put bluntly we now get to see the police whenever we call, the OPP model will be to only respond to certain incidents and all the others will require a phone call to Smiths Falls com centre who will inform you to phone in a statement and the police may respond.

On the numbers side try this












Just an estimate but not far off and it shows that by hacking the Service to pieces and transferring major administration to the OPP Human resources department in Orillia you can save tons of money.

The major arguments will take place about the levels of service that will be delivered, I have it on good authority that that the major difference in the level of service is that the OPP disregards crimes of a low monetary or nuisance nature. So if your lawnmower gets stolen then you phone in a report, as you do in Hamilton Twp for instance. After a while the culture of disregarding minor crime in an urban setting leads to vandalism and disrespect for the law, "Why obey the law if the police are not going to enforce the small stuff"?

In an urban setting it is the small stuff that makes communities!

This story has a local echo

At tonight's public unveiling of the latest playground - the harbour fountain and ice pond, I asked what was the history of this project. The answer I was given, by a member of Council who shall remain as an unnamed source, was that last October, the local MPP (our pal Lou) came to Cobourg and asked if he gave the Town some money, but not to be used on infrastructure, could the Town put it to use. Of course said the Leader of Bread and Circuses and guess what we now have funding for a fountain. All from Liberal coffers and of course nothing to do with the upcoming election or part of the ongoing Provincial mess that McGuinty finds himself in now. Read about the big picture in this article TheStar.com - News - Tories, NDP ask auditor to probe grants

The OPP proposal

OK, so the skinny is this: the OPP came to Town tonight and presented a proposal to Council, Council listened and then made a motion to refer it back to staff with a list of items that need answers. Here is the motion

The bottom line is that Cobourg will be policed by means of a "standalone model" which would be only one of two in the Province (Quinte-West is the other). Headed by a Staff Sergeant and 23 Officers led by 5 Sergeants. The cost for this is estimated at $4,129,665.00 for the first year.

Job losses would be in the Communications department as all communications will handled by OPP Orillia. Only 4 civilians will be keeping their jobs, 2 actually as the other 2 are not now used by Cobourg (datacentre).

The OPP will offer jobs to the current officers and the officers will be dedicated to Cobourg not the area.

A public meeting will be held in May to elicit public opinion.

Stay tuned.

BTW I have just checked my files and find that my monthly policing costs have risen $9.00 per month in the last five years. I can obviously handle that!!

Two interesting events this week

Cobourg Council is presenting two events this week: Monday - a presentation by the OPP, and Tuesday the open house about the planned ice rink at the harbourland.

The first; the OPP presentation will be a high powered dog and pony show designed to show how the OPP can deliver comparable policing for about a million dollars less than the current budget. However as the cliche goes "The devil is in the details!". My opinion on this is simple - we should not change and if we do the cost of change and the future cost will be no saving. So what do the opponents do to stop such a change? Firstly we have to smoke out the councillors who want to change. I suspect that Delanty, Brocanier and Spooner and perhaps Frost will be for change, the others will not say and wait for the vote and declare at the last possible minute. Secondly we have to have objective reports from places that have switched, to investigate their experiences. Thirdly the case for no change has to be made on economics and social good. Do we want to be policed by a bureaucracy in Orillia?

The event on Tuesday is an open house presented by somebody from TSH, who has drawn up plans for an ice rink at the harbourland. The circumstances surrounding this plan are mysterious. As Cllr. Frost says, "where does this idea come from?" we know where the money is coming from - the Liberals election slush fund! Delivered by our pal Lou to a smiling Mayor (who is lusting for another monument) we are now told that the citizens need an outdoor playground. What for and who has asked for this? The biggest questions for me are: how much are the operating costs and why are we creating ice space when we need a new arena - will the icepad be of regulation size to accommodate regulated hockey games and why are we now going to replace expensive grass with concrete, how pleasing will that be in the summer time?

So if you have any questions about these projects get down to Town Hall and participate in the process

More electronic voting woes - can the idea!

Read this and then think why some of us still want the old pen and paper ballots Recrimination follows chaos over new Scots voting procedures | Special Reports | Guardian Unlimited Politics