Planting a parkette

Just about everyone travelling through downtown Courtice has seen the new parkette under construction at the northwest corner of Highway 2 and Trulls Road.

This is really a victory for those of us who conceived and maintained a planting at the southeast corner of the property for about eight years. Personally, I'm overjoyed that this parkette, owned by the muncipality, has been enhanced through the long-term efforts of local residents.

The seeds for a downtown park at Trulls Road/Hwy. 2 were planted in 2004 by members of the Courtice Horticultural Club - and as president I'm glad to have helped.

As the club embarks towards the end of the 2012 season, the revitalization of one of the most important corners of Courtice's downtown has taken shape and we look forward to preparations for 2013.

There will be many opportunities for local service clubs to help out including various upgrades and a permanent water supply.

To be sure, in the middle of very hard economic times in Clarington it's remarkable that the town found approximately $100,000 to spend on the creation of a parkette.

But ultimately this is about the town giving back to Courtice. For as long as I've lived in Courtice - over a dozen years now - our tax dollars have been flowing eastward in the form of community grants that precious few Courtice-based organizations availed themselves of. Simply put Courtisans were supposed to be granted $1 per resident -  about $20,000 a year in grants - and to say we received a third of this would be generous.

With this parkette I personally feel Courtice has something to show for what it put into Clarington in the form of unused community grants. But make no mistake. This parkette was bought and paid for by the taxes local residents paid and not some great gift from the municipality. 
Going forward this parkette and other downtown improvement projects should be done by local businesses in partnership with service clubs and interested citizens - not the town.

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In an interesting development Covanta Energy, who will operate an incinerator in south-west Clarington, co-sponsored a family movie night. This is a sign one of Courtice's newest businesses wants to reach out to the community in a gesture of involvement with residents. I'm sure we will increasingly see the Covanta logo around town as they follow in OPG's footsteps.

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Please also note that I'm also posting this blog post on my Tumblr account - and henceforth new Protons & Electrons posts will appear there. So please update your links and visit http://markstanisz.tumblr.com and check it out if you are reading this on Blogger. The Blogger account will remain as an archive of my earlier material.

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Next blog I'll take a look at recent local development properties and issues in and around Courtice.

Bring on the Tetley!

The Tea Party movement that began in the United States in 2009 boils down to one thing.

Trust.

For example - after working hard and bringing home a paycheck that has ultimately been taxed perhaps as much as a half - who do you trust to spend that money?

You or the government?

Let's put it another way: Do you think that if you gave your money to someone else - say some backroom bureaucrat whom you could never identify and who never saw a dollar they couldn't find a program for - do you honestly think they would spend it better than you? 

That's the essence of the Tea Party movement - letting the wage-earners keep and spend what they earned.

Responsible people are not saying there is an absence of need for government.

Does government really have to tax upwards of half of everyone's income? Because between the payroll deductions, federal taxes, provincial taxes, HST, hidden taxes, property taxes and education taxes that is pretty much what's happening.

Well, you may ask, without government spending wouldn't so many programs disappear that residents would literally be thrown in the street and wouldn't our roads crumble before our eyes?

Really?

So... if I don't give a dollar to my government - it disappears? I can't simply give it to an existing company, group or organization or right to the person or service that I want? Let's be serious - precisely same money still exists and it would simply bypass the government middle-man, who naturally takes a cut.

We might even have more actual services and less bureaucrats - imagine that!

So why am I making this argument now?

Because we are shortly into new budget deliberations here in Clarington and we are likely to see many, many services clamouring for a bigger piece of the pie and probably countered by some unimaginative ways to simply provide the same services for a few pennies less while largely missing the boat for substantive changes.

It's unlikely you'll see Claringtonians protesting for or against changes in large numbers - we just don't seem to do that - but most of us know that a loonie's best home is in the pocket of the one that earned it.

Next blog I'll take a look at public accountibility - do we expect our politicians to be working or playing on their time off?

Proof is in the pudding - Clarington budget 2011

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 Clarington's 2011 budget weighed in with a whopping 3.8 per cent increase and we heard barely a peep out of residents - ok maybe a few peeps on Facebook but that was about it.

So we can conclude one of two things happened - people either support the increase or they don't care enough to voice their opinion. There certainly isn't a vocal groundswell of opposition to it. Durham Region's budget clocked in at a 2.42 per cent increase and Oshawa, our big neighbour to the west, squeeked in a meagre 0.7 per cent increase to their budget.

Three points about the budget:

•  This is clearly an Adrian Foster budget. He never marketed himself as a voracious tax-cutting mayor but as a prudent manager of town finances. It's clear he's aiming for four per cent annual increases - more or less - without zeros or eight per cent increases.
• It's so expected. Other than budget hawks, who among us really expected a zero per cent increase budget? Ward 3 Local Councillor Corinna Traill could only muster council support for three of her 20 cost-cutting suggestions - and even had they all succeeded we would still have had about a two per cent increase - and she's one of the budget slashers. With inflation and the majority of council amenable to staffing increases, a four per cent or so increase always looked likely.
• This foreshadows a repeat next year with maybe a dash of good news. Oshawa is getting a great deal of attention for its relatively low increase. This means that next year or the year after, if inflation increases a point or three, Clarington will probably match or even come in slightly under Oshawa's increase because the other governments will be playing catch-up - I'm thinking the police may ask for more feet on the street in the Region's case, which they didn't this year.

In the end I feel dissatisfied with everything about this budget.

There is no vision - no imagination - and that includes the duo of Traill and Ward 1 Local Councillor Joe Neal.

We even had the spectacle of Traill - who herself accused council of flip-flopping earlier in the year while actually brandishing a flip-flop - voting against the budget and thereby against her promised additional firefighters.

Credit therefore goes to Foster for passing a budget that ups the number of firefighters - which is exactly what he promised.

Cost-cutting duo Traill and Neal's big idea seems to be to look for nickels and dimes from various programs - which is fine - but that approach won't get to zero or - gasp - lower. Plus, there's nothing bold about an upcoming plan to re-examine benefits packages - just about every company is doing it and I suspect the savings won't be all that much in the long run - insurance companies know how to adapt.

I definitely don't get the sense of a great plan brewing, something innovative, a systemic change that replaces the structural increases we are building into the  system.

Until someone steps back and looks at the whole concept of what local government should be in the business of providing - and how - this situation will continue. Self-styled opponents - elected and non-elected - will be left looking for a couple bucks in savings by skimming from here and there - trimming parsley from the prime rib dinner if you will - and claiming they tried their best.

But real savings will miraculously remain elusive.

Let me put it this way - it's like paying for a trip to Disney World and haggling over whether to pay for an iced cream cone on the flight down and boasting about how much money we can save. What I'm suggesting is we need to forget the vacation altogether and focus on maybe setting up our own flight service to make a few bucks and cash in on all this vacationing going on.

Something like that I can get behind but this budget - more of the same.

In my next blog post I'm going to look at why the Host Community Agreement no longer matters to the prospects of Clarington hosting an incinerator.

It's local council report card time!

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Our elected local council is now four months into their first year so I thought I would issue first trimester report cards.

I decided to go with four criteria - leadership (do they have a plan and do classmates value their opinion), teamwork (do they play nice with their collegues), effectiveness (did they get the job done) and communication (do they talk to the residents that elected them as well as staff department heads).

I think this is a good balance with which to grade our studious class.

The point of this exercise, of course, is to stimulate debate and discussion about what makes a good local representative and to try and set some objective criteria with which to gauge their performance. It's not to throw stones at someone because we don't particularly like their political stance nor should it be taken as a 'rah-rah' cheerleader.

Feel free to come up with your own criteria and ratings and post them below - I'd love to see them.

I want to begin by pointing out what I see as four factions developing on council:

Veteran Guard - Mayor Adrian Foster, Ward 1 & 2 Regional Councillor Mary Novak, Ward 3 & 4 Councillor Willie Woo and Ward 2 Local Councillor Ron Hooper are experienced at politics and three of the four are our regional representatives.

The Firm - Ward 1 Local Councillor Joe Neal and Ward 3 Local Councillor Corinna Traill - two representatives with a legal background. If there is an opposition party on council this is it. They tend to vote together but on contested motions are usually strongly outgunned by the Veteran Guard.

New Faces - We have Ward 4 Local Councillor Wendy Partner joined by Ward 1 Local Councillor Joe Neal and Ward 3 Local Councillor Corinna Traill. They are the fresh faces on council and many residents are looking to them to shake things up.

The Woman's Caucus - In the 2010 election the number of women on council tripled from one to three. Still not a majority but there is perhaps an opportunity to see a different approach to local issues.

And now the marks:

Mayor - Mayor Adrian Foster gets bonus marks for conducting the first survey of residents to actually see what their priorities are for the strategic review. There was even a time extension to allow more people to participate. He loses some marks, however, for his embroiled conflicts with The Firm - even if it does take two to tango he needs to find a way to lead the dance. We would have expected to see a better performance from Foster given his stellar performance as a local councillor and his failure - thus far - to halt the incinerator is troubling to many. GRADE: B-

Regional Councillor Wards 1 & 2 - Mary Novak is the most experienced politician on council and has a comprehensive understanding of the issues that matter to residents and the businesses of the muncipality. She could do a better job reaching out to opponents but overall Novak demonstrates that experience matters. A team player and effective representative she needs to work on her communication skills to really hit her full potential. GRADE: A-

Regional Councillor Ward 3 & 4 - Willie Woo has such an affable demeanor that it's almost impossible not to like him. He seems to be taking a bit of time settling in to his new role as regional representative and doesn't often take the leadership role he is capable of. But he's a strong team player and gets all his ducks in a row ahead of any vote. GRADE: B

Local councillor Ward 1 - Joe Neal has political experience but hasn't been able to convert that into building a winning team yet. As half of The Firm he has been thwarted in his legal attempts to stop the incinerator. Not everything has to boil down to a legal showdown or be sent out for expensive consultants - he should perhaps branch away from his signature move 'call in the lawyers' and look at alternative tactics. But his success in having delegation time increased and vigorous support of funds for his ward shows passion and promise. GRADE: A-

Local councillor Ward 2 - Ron Hooper is a respected business owner in his Ward, knows his constituents and fights for their best interests. He's not at all afraid to change course if that's the smart thing to do. But we need to see more vision from Hooper because he has the goodwill and alliances to get things done. GRADE: B-

Local Councillor Ward 3 - Corinna Traill is exactly what people want from their politicians - she's strong, forceful, creative and has a great online presence through her social media connections. But it has become increasingly obvious that she has not built any alliances outside The Firm. The only thing preventing her from scoring higher is her lack of success in actually producing winning results that are not later rescinded. GRADE: B-

Local Councillor Ward 4 - If you go to council and watch Wendy Partner she doesn't talk much. That's a good thing because she is busy listening. Partner has demonstrated glimpses of a quick wit and a clear grasp of the issues and as the months go on her confidence is visibly increasing. She has the opportunity to bridge the many gaps between various factions on council and could end up being a dealmaker. GRADE: B

Council as a whole - Council is clearly not 'working together' and part of the problem is that everyone has to want to work together. The former 4-3 flip-flopping council has been replaced by the 5-2 flip-floppers. This council is somehow much less than the sum of it's parts. However, it has the right mix to come to good decisions for the people of Clarington if it starts focusing on the right issues and get them dealt with. GRADE: C

In my next blog I'm going to take a look at the fallout from the Clarington budget.