Summer is winding down. The evenings are beginning to cool, and the leaves on the trees will soon begin to turn colour. School kids will return to the classroom to embark on another year of learning, and shorts and sandals will soon be replaced by scarves and mitts. While there are still a few weeks of summer left officially, the Labour Day long weekend typically marks the unofficial end of summer.
The end of August also means the end of council’s annual summer break, and so council will soon get back to work with regular meetings resuming at the start of September.
While the annual August break from council meetings can be refreshing, as usual in the final week of the break, I find myself eager for council to get back to their regular meeting schedule. I have missed the agenda packages, and I have missed council’s regular meeting schedule. Some guys love sports, I love council meetings.
It won’t be long before council’s 2025 budget season is in full swing, and as I do every year, I am hoping for significant ratepayer participation. Hope as I might, in recent years public participation during council’s budget season has been minimal, very minimal, but I continue to hope that residents will jump in, share their views, and help guide our council toward a budget that meets the wants and needs of as broad a spectrum of ratepayers as possible.
What I would like to see council focus on when they shift into budget mode?
I would hope that policing will be one of the areas that council explores in depth.
Over the summer we have seen a spike in property crimes, and while several arrests have been made over the past couple of months, it has remained a concern for many residents. In addition to property crimes, illicit drugs have also become a concern for the community, with a significant increase in the number of overdoses in the county, including here in Meaford. Five of those overdoses have been fatal. Grey Bruce Public Health has issued 20 Opioid Alerts in the first seven months of 2024, which is more than the 16 alerts issued throughout all of 2023.
As this community grows, so will the concerns about crime, and I think council should explore what additional services could be provided by the OPP, like some community policing which would see some uniformed officers walking a beat from time to time, engaging with residents on the sidewalks or in our parks. Increased nighttime patrols might also be worth exploring, and it might help anxious residents to know that a higher police presence while most of us are sleeping might help to lessen the opportunities for the criminal element in this community.
Though we currently spend more than $2 million per year on policing, I agree with the many voices which have been calling for an increased police presence in our community, though that could be a challenge given the province’s new direction when it comes to the policing provided by the OPP. These days policing takes a more regional approach, as opposed to community policing, which so many, including myself, would like to see become fashionable once again.
While not within the typical scope for a municipal council, but certainly related to the increase in crime that we have seen in this community, an increase in support services for those with addictions could be something that council could raise with Public Health Grey Bruce along with other agencies, as the problem only seems to be growing.
Another area that I think council should continue to have a strong focus is of course infrastructure.
Infrastructure always tops my list of areas that I would like to see a focus on by council. You can never have enough funding to adequately address infrastructure needs from road surfaces to bridges. The needs are many, and I hope that council continues the focus it has had for the past several years on infrastructure needs; I hope they find ways to dedicate even more resources to those infrastructure needs.
The complaints about the condition of some of the roads in this municipality have been many in recent months, and council should take the opportunity provided by budget season to dive deeply into our infrastructure needs. Roads and bridges aside, the pending and extremely expensive need to expand the wastewater treatment plant will continue to haunt this council, as it will require many tens of millions of dollars. It is uncertain if there will be any assistance from upper levels of government, who have much deeper pockets than this rural municipality.
Councillors will also continue to have the issue of the proposed pumped storage facility looming over them for the remainder of this term of council.
Though not budget related, there will be a cost; I am hopeful that we will soon see a member of council propose a question for the ballot for the 2026 municipal election, the only sort of ‘referendum’ mechanism available to municipal governments in Ontario. One of the frustrations I have had with council over the more than four years that the issue has been hotly debated in the public realm, is that council has done little to bring the community together for serious and significant discussion. Council has listened, that is certain. They have listened to untold numbers of residents who have attended a council meeting in order to speak during the public participation segment of the meeting agenda, and they have no doubt read the hundreds, or more likely thousands of email messages they have received over the past four years. But they haven’t engaged with the community in any meaningful two-way discussion, something that would likely have been appreciated by many prior to council’s vote in February 2023 to offer conditional support to the proposal.
The residents who are most concerned about the proposal don’t want to be sharing their concerns with stone-faced councillors who only listen and never engage in conversation. In all of my 35 years in municipal council chambers in two provinces, one frustration that I have seen over and over again is the common practice of municipal councils to listen to residents, but not respond in the moment in any way. Residents who are ratepayers, it should always be remembered, when they have taken the time to attend council and share their concerns. Many don’t want to simply speak to a brick wall, they want to engage in discussion, they want to debate the issue, they want to hear what members of council actually think and feel, and they want to know that council is not only listening, but also forming and sharing their own views. Some healthy discussion and debate could go a long way toward helping residents understand what council thinks, and why they hold the positions they do.
Summer is winding down indeed, and it is now time to get back to work.
