Loading...
The Citizen, 2016-01-28, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, JANUARY 28, 2016. PAGE 5. Other Views Happy days are on the way! You made it! The saddest day of the year is behind us and look at you, bright- eyed and bushy -tailed, ready to take on all comers! Saddest day of the year? That would be Monday, Jan. 18. Experts have determined that the third Monday in January is officially Ground Zero in the calendar year. Here's how they figured that out You take the weather (W) — which in mid-January is about as lousy as a Canadian winter gets, stir in (d), your debt level (all those Christmas bills rolling in); factor in (m), your crummy monthly salary (because nobody ever gets a raise in January). You blew off your New Year's resolutions again (Q), and Yuletide holidays (T) are as far back in the rear view mirror as the Easter break is over the horizon. It all combines to leave us lethargic, unmotivated (M) and too bummed out to take remedial action (Na). It's summed up in the brutally frank equation: {[W + (D -d)] x T^Q} [M x N_a]. Really. Any fifth -grader could figure it out. But we don't have to. Blue Monday, 2016 is history. We're over the hump. It's all sunshine and melting snowbanks from here on. And don't knock the snowbanks. Last week out of 85 countries surveyed, Canada won second place in the Best Country in the World competition (Germany took the gold) at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. The U.S. placed fourth. How did Canada pull that off? The experts measured income, life expectancy, social support, generosity, government corruption and personal freedom. Final verdict: silver medal for The Great White North. Speaking of which, five countries you DON'T want to move to are Benin, Rwanda, Syria (duh), Burundi and Togo. They came out at the bottom end of the Comfy Country totem pole. And if you're still feeling gutted because your $2 ticket failed to make you a Powerball lottery billionaire, last week, cheer up. Better still, talk to Alex Toth. He won $13 million in a Florida lottery in the early '90s. Ten years later he was a one-man Lawyers' Benevolent Fund, contesting a pricey divorce as well as charges of tax fraud. And then there's Jack Whittaker. He won the Powerball jackpot back in 2002 — 315 million bucks. Five years later he'd burned through most of the winnings, had his house and office broken into several times, seen his beloved granddaughter die under extremely suspicious circumstances and chalked up two arrests for drunk driving. A bitter Whittaker told a reporter "I wish I'd torn that ticket up." Lots of reasons to be thankful you're not 'a winner' like Jack Whittaker, Or like another guy I know. He's a bit of a right winger, actually, with a vicious attitude towards chadors, burkas and niqabs. This guy woke up on Blue Monday to find out he'd lost his job, was forced not only to get out of his house but to turn it over to his worst enemy AND had to move to a city with a Muslim mayor in a province with a socialist Premier. So you didn't win the Powerball. So you don't have a chalet in Switzerland. At least you're not Stephen Harper. Elections might be too far apart Jf you have ever attended a North Huron Council meeting, you know that the public forum part of the agenda, where ratepayers can get up and ask questions about things council has already discussed, is at the wrong end of the meeting. The bylaws have been passed, the discussion has been had and, unless you're like me and reading the agenda is part of your job, you probably didn't have a chance to chime in on what you think is important until after council has already made a decision. That said, it could be worse. "How could it be worse?" you might ask. Well, I'll tell you. There could be nothing. Like other municipalities, take Morris- Turnberry for example, there could be no designated time for the public to comment on an issue or a decision. While some people may say not being allowed to comment on an issue until after it's decided is the worst, I'm firmly in the it's better than nothing camp. And nothing is just what North Huron ratepayers will be left with as far as being able to comment on discussions by council if the proposed draft of the municipality's procedural bylaw is passed by North Huron. During council's Jan. 19 meeting (which was delayed from Jan. 18 due to the snowstorm of last week), council debated a new procedural bylaw with a couple councillors stating they thought public input was important in making decisions and understanding where the public sits on many of council's decisions (my hats off to Councillors Trevor Seip and Bill Knott for voicing those concerns). I'm not against doing away with the question -and -answer period for any professional reason (despite the fact that it makes a great time to ask clarifying questions to council and staff in a public setting). I'm against doing away with it because members of the public have a right to make their voice heard whether or not they want to take the time to fill out a form and become an official deputation to council. I know why many municipalities are looking at doing away with any kind of ad-hoc public input. I've seen it go awry. Denny Scott Sigaiii rI Denny's Den I'm not going to point to any particular municipalities, but let's just say I've seen a question -and -answer period go as long as the entire council meeting before and after it when dealing with highly contentious issues like... say... wind turbines. However, even those lengthy debates between supporters and detractors of an issue prove to show council members where people stand on the issue and give people the opportunity to feel like they've provided input to the decision-making process. As far as public meetings being for the public to view and not to participate in, well I think that idea belongs in a fenced -in field with the rest of the bull. If I'm not allowed to be an active part of a meeting where my tax dollars are being distributed, then feel free to reimburse me the municipal portion of my taxes. Every four years we get to elect the people we want to represent us at a municipal level, but that shouldn't be the end of the discussion. We should have the opportunity to stand up and discuss issues with the people making decisions with our tax dollars. Sure, we can all sign up as deputations, but, sometimes, that isn't enough. Sometimes you get to a meeting and a councillor brings up an issue that wasn't on the agenda. Sometimes an issue travels into new territory. Sometimes, some of us work for a living and don't necessarily have time to make a PowerPoint presentation explaining why council should lean one way or another on an issue. Those times are when the ability to give feedback as often as council regularly meets is important. Keep in mind that I still don't think North Huron's system for that feedback is perfect. As a matter of fact, I recently became aware that Central Huron may have hit on the perfect way to keep its ratepayers not only informed, but invested in their meetings. There are two separate public input sessions in Central Huron meetings; a public comment period before any decisions are made and a public question period after the decisions are made. In my mind, that's the perfect way to do it. North Huron ratepayers shouldn't have to wait until after a decision is made to say that the decision-making process is a bit off-track. I can't say how many times I have sat and watched a discussion happen among councillors where there are key pieces of information missing from the discussion. I also can't say how many times I've seen council completely reverse its stance on concerns after that one piece of information was presented. Take, for example, the anti -fortification bylaw that was passed by North Huron during the same meeting. When it was explained that the bylaw wasn't primarily a means of scaring people but a way of recovering costs involved with fixing infringements on the bylaw, council certainly forgot most of the concerns it had and approved the bylaw. I'm not sure if I'm just a thinking -outside - the -box kind of guy here, but I saw that from the get -go when it was first introduced to council late last year. If I had the chance to point that out at sometime, maybe it could have prevented having to wait until the chief building official had returned from vacation. Then again, hindsight always is 20/20. In the end, removing unfettered public consultation will lead to people not being involved in council and create a situation where ratepayers aren't going to communicate with their representatives. Relegating ratepayers to either having to fill out forms and stand in front of council and the gallery or being silent is a sure-fire way to make sure that some people who have legitimate concerns never address council. It's a bad idea, unless getting people to stop participating in democracy was the goal all along. Shawn '‘` ,rV Loughlin A lift Shawn's Sense Executive decision Things are changing quite rapidly in the news surrounding the Goderich-to- Guelph (G2G) Rail Trail and you could be forgiven if you're having trouble following. I have stated before that I think the trail is a good idea, so let's get that out of the way right now. There are concerns that have been outlined by numerous critics of the trail, whether they be councillors or adjacent landowners, but overall I think the concept of the trail is a good one for many reasons. However, a lot has changed since the trail was first proposed, and what began as a neat little idea to repurpose an abandoned rail line and make it a trail has evolved into a rather expensive venture with plenty of moving parts. I'm not going to get into which concerns have or have not been addressed. What I want to focus on here is the funding that was approved last week and how we got there. Huron County Council is handing over in excess of $70,000 to G2G Inc. the volunteer group taking on the creation of the trail, conditional upon the trail's Ontario Municipal Cycling Infrastructure Program (OMCIP) funding application being approved. The provincial government, understandably, wants to know that Huron County, as the funding applicant, has some skin in the game and has asked that it provide at least 20 per cent of the $351,000 total project cost. This has led to G2G Inc. requesting funding from the county. That's the first big change. Over and over again councillors — and their constituents — had been assured that none of their money would be fed into the trail. To help whittle the total down, Paul VanderMolen of G2G Inc. proposed to use two previous grants given to the trail. First, it was the $20,000 given to the trail by the Huron County Economic Development Board. Originally, this grant was earmarked for a handful of practical uses when it was approved late last year, now it's part of the county's contribution to the trail. Next it was the $16,000 in the 2015 budget. This is the one that I, and a few councillors by the sound of it, find most concerning. The $16,000 in the budget was meant to be an in-kind donation that provided for staff time in the Huron County Planning Department. In his report, Director of Planning and Development Scott Tousaw said that the 500 hours spent on the trail over the last three years has been absorbed within existing budgets. First, I think this goes against the spirit of the funding and second, if 500 hours can be so easily absorbed into a county department's budget, perhaps budgets and workloads aren't quite as tight as we've been led to believe. Let's also forget for the time being that the re -allocation of that $16,000, from staff time to trail work, has yet to even be approved by council — but it's been factored in. Then there's the remaining $34,200 that council decided to contribute to "top up" the contribution. Not only did council go against its grant policy in approving the funding without a staff report, but it also went against a mantra so well worn that people began to believe it: No tax dollars would go towards the trail. It certainly would be a shame, as Howick Reeve Art Versteeg said at the meeting, to leave provincial money on the table, and yes G2G Inc. is working to develop an asset for Huron County, but course -altering decisions like these, whether or not council feels justified in making them, can breed distrust between a government, its staff and the people they serve.