By John Francis
At a Tobermory Chamber of Commerce meeting last week, I mentioned that Councillor Smokey Golden had gone to bat for the Chamber at a recent Special Council Meeting about paid parking. “What Special Council Meeting?”, I was asked. “Monday Oct 25,” I replied, “10:00AM. Didn’t you know about it?”
No, they didn’t.
There seemed a general consensus that Chamber members should have been invited to attend or at least informed about the meeting.
The Agenda for that Special Meeting included a letter from Scott and Carla Hellyer of Scott’s PRO Hardware. “Because we have no BIA in Lion’s Head, we wish that council would have asked individual businesses for input into paid parking in the downtown core before enforcing it during our current COVID pandemic.”
Other letters followed the same thread, some thoughtful, others angry. A few excerpts give a sense of different people’s reactions:
“…the community feels they were not included in the decision to implement this policy. Most importantly, local business owners feel that they were not at all part of any of the planning or consultation process.”
“Failure to share decision making and research that has been done to reach certain decisions, has made the community feel very excluded and suspicious.”
“I am sick and tired of this current mayor and council over the past years in some of your decisions. This paid parking in Lion’s Head business district is the last straw. How incompetent are you to not see the effect it has had on local business.”
* * * * *
I recently spoke to a business owner who is frustrated with the number of decisions being made without his knowledge or input. He feels he should have been informed. He asked: “Was this incompetence or deliberate?”
“Neither,” I replied. “It’s mainly a function of understaffing,” I could almost see his eyes roll, even though we were having this conversation by email.
But it’s true. Communications are a big problem in our municipality for a number of reasons. Many of those reasons are structural. There is no place in the municipality where a sign would be seen by everyone. This newspaper is not widely read by people under 25. Information posted to social media has a very low penetration rate among people over 50. A lot of people are too busy to read ANYTHING. The municipality’s own web presence is much improved, with a Facebook page, subscriptions to web pages and the new http://letstalknbp.ca function, but the comments above demonstrate that it is not reaching everybody it should. The community has no central hub, no bulletin board.
But I think these structural reasons are all secondary — the biggest problem is that there is nobody at the municipality in charge of communicating.
“We are so lean,” the CAO lamented at a planning meeting last spring.
It’s true. Northern Bruce Peninsula has the lowest tax rate by far of any municipality in Bruce County. Also the smallest budget, by far, and the smallest staff. And you get what you pay for. Even if somebody had time to develop a comprehensive communications strategy, who would be tasked with implementing it and doing the actual work?
The CAO? She is already responsible for far too much and doesn’t even have an admin assistant. In addition to her day-to-day responsibility for EVERYTHING, she singlehandedly researched and designed the MAT tax and a regulation system for STAs; now she has to implement them.
The Clerk? She already runs the entire municipality; specifically, preparing and implementing all bylaws, running (and attending) all Council meetings and much more. And organizing next year’s municipal election.
The Deputy Clerk? The one who organizes the agendas for Council and most of the municipality’s committees, and also attends the meetings and takes the minutes — for Council and several committees — and writes them up for approval and publication. (Those agendas run a combined total of up to a thousand pages every month.) In her “spare time” she is responsible for accessibility throughout the municipality and manages all the emergency plans.
The Community Services Manager? The one who is responsible for both harbours, the arena, the Rotary Hall, the Community Centre in Tobermory, plus the Sustainable Tourism Advisory Group and the Sustainable Housing Committee. Oh yes, and economic development too. The one who also covers the facility manager’s job because that position has been vacant for a year and a half…
There is literally nobody we can blame for communications shortcomings. Oh sure, blame the CAO or blame the Mayor — they’re in charge, right? But really? I don’t think so.
You will note that I haven’t mentioned any names. That’s because I don’t think this is about personalities — the problem is structural. We don’t have enough people. The CAO needs an assistant. The Community Services Manager needs an assistant, or at least a facilities supervisor. And somebody needs to be tasked with communicating to citizens and stakeholders.
But you can’t do that without raising taxes. By coincidence, the 2022 budget deliberations are about to begin.
So, hey Council! We need better communications. Bump the budget up so you can hire some people. Please.
