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Present method of selecting Warden is 'is self-serving'
to the editor,
Posted
October 5, 2012
The story this week about proposed changes to Simcoe County council
governance issues was an interesting insight into the rationale of the
many mayors and deputy mayors of the County.
The various positions seem to reflect a rather lost and very divergent
set of positions regarding the possible future make up of our County
Council in the years ahead. It does on the other hand help explain why
the County affairs are handled in the manner that they are. It becomes
quite clear that those sitting in Midhurst on our behalf depend very
heavily on the massive staff support that the members of County Council
have deemed necessary.
The adoption of the Committee of the Whole format will not bring
forward any more membership initiatives or debate, not unlike our own
municipal council. The same escape mechanisms will be available to
County as we have in terms how issues out of the blue become either put
in place without public awareness or a councillor's active
participation through debate and or public meetings.
In the conditions we face today, it is not fiscally the most
appropriate or politically prudent time to introduce the expense of
initiating a position of a full-time Warden.
What is that going to cost us on top of an already overburdened
"sunshine list" at County level and at a time when we already are aware
of the recent announcement of a new MPAC assessments would add
estimated $53 to average tax bill in New Tecumseth.
I have to agree with Ron Fischer and his position on the
question of who should be making these decisions as to the future
composition of the upper tier of our local government. The present
method is self-serving and riddled with potential conflicts, hence why
the standing committee system probably works.
If you take a Council of the Whole meeting at County with 32 members,
how long it is going to take them to go through a regular meeting while
juggling all the motions and the declared conflicts of interest?
I say cut the membership in half and allow each council to nominate a
member of their duly elected council, not necessarily the mayor or his
or her deputy to represent the people and their interests and property
taxes.
It may well be appropriate to suggest that where municipalities with a
growing and developed tax base that is accommodating increases in
population (say in excess of 30,000 or perhaps as high as 60,000) may
well be entitled to elect at-large a second representative.
The County Council thereby could handle our county affairs with a
decrease in the travel and the per diem payments for attending County
Council and its many committees by perhaps as many as 25 per cent of
the current seats being eliminated.
I hope that before any final decision is taken at Midhurst on this
matter that our local municipal councils all across Simcoe County will
have the respect for their voters and afford them the opportunity for
public input.
