By John Francis, Bruce Peninsula Press
One of the challenges a new council faces is finding a common voice, a common direction. This is especially true when, as in this case, there has been a large turnover — three of council’s five seats have new occupants.
Fortunately, help is available. Evergreen Innovative Strategies specializes in facilitating such conversations. Several years ago, the company managed a tourism consultation process for Northern Bruce Peninsula. Evergreen’s Peter Politis handled the tourism consultation; he returned to MNBP for Council’s planning session on November 30. (Politis does facilitating part-time; he is also the Mayor of Cochrane, Ontario.)
The first task was to establish a list of things to discuss. Survey feedback suggested a number of items that needed to be evaluated. They were, in no particular order:
• Establishing Modern Waterworks (Drinking Water and Wastewater Systems)
• Completion of the Lion’s Head Arena & Community Centre
• Implement Attainable Housing Plan
• Development of Infrastructure
• Establish a new Tobermory Boat Launch
• Development of a new parking lot in Tobermory
• Improved cellular and internet service
• Commitment to the Climate Action Plan
• Installation of traffic lights in core traffic areas
• New long-term care home
• Doing something about Cabot Head Road (although it appeared on the list as “not wanting to see Cabot Head Road left hanging for another two years”).
Next came a SWOT exercise — thinking of our current and future situation in terms of Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats.
With all those ideas written on large sheets of paper and taped to the walls, council and staff conducted a “sticker exercise”, with each person being given stickers to put on their highest priority items (green for council members, blue for staff). Everybody also got red stickers to mark the things they do not want to see.
The most popular item — with ten stickers — was completing the arena/community centre upgrade. The second highest priority — 8 stickers — was improving internet and cell service. Implementing the Housing Action Plan came third, water and sewage systems came fourth and another boat ramp in Tobermory came fifth.
It should be noted that Cabot Head Road also got a high rating, but in reverse. Eleven red stickers indicated that doing nothing about Cabot Head Road is very unpopular.
Also very unpopular (9 red stickers) was 0% tax increases. (Politis gave a quick explanation of how “zero-based” budgeting works at the municipal level. About three quarters of your budget goes up no matter what you do. Cost-of-living clauses increase your staff wages; price increases on materials and contracted services cannot be avoided; the OPP always needs more money every year and so forth. In order to get to zero, you have to reduce the one quarter of the budget you control by an amount to offset the increases in the three quarters you don’t control.)
The final exercise of the day was a SWOT analysis of the highest priorities, considering each of them in terms of its potential to affect the municipality positively or negatively. This yielded surprising results — a very different list of priorities.
Two linked items appear to be the most important issues facing this term of council: waterworks (town sewers & drinking water) and housing. They have the largest upside if we can make them happen, and by far the heaviest downside if we can’t. Economic development grinds to a halt if you can’t find workers. If workers can’t find a place to live, how can they work here?
Considered through the SWOT metric, the arena/community centre upgrade is the fourth highest priority. (Councillors still seemed pretty determined to make sure it happens.)
Peter Politis will submit a final report summarizing the day’s discussions and conclusions.
