On hiatus

This blog will be on hiatus until at least Thursday, Nov. 12. Unfortunately, I won’t have the opportunity to compile a weekly look ahead for Nov. 9-13, look for the return of this post on Nov. 16.

Please check back after Nov. 12 for new posts.

Quick ‘Open your doors, Oxford’ update

I neglected to do this when I posted the last updates to this project at the very end of October. I had requested and now received the minutes from the education sessions held by councils in Ingersoll, Tillsonburg and East Zorra-Tavistock between Jan. 2008 and September 2009. Ingersoll’s and East Zorra-Tavistock’s have been scanned/posted, I haven’t yet had the chance to do so for Tillsonburg’s.

Water / sewer rates

I mentioned this in the ‘week ahead’ post Monday, but Oxford council is holding a committee-of-the-whole meeting Thursday at 1 p.m. to discuss a water and sewer rate setting policy. The agenda, with the associated Hemson Consulting Ltd. and Genivar reports is here. The 149-page report is not for the faint of heart (it took me two days’ worth of spare moments to read in its entirety). I found it a great one-stop report to learn about the history and composition of the 19 different water and nine different sewer systems in Oxford.

First, it’s important to note no rates will actually be set at Thursday’s meeting. The water and sewer rates for 2009-10 have already been set (this was done in June) and council won’t need to do so again until the 2011 budget. It’s also important to note water and sewer rates are only paid by those connected to municipal water and sewer. If you’re on a well / septic, this doesn’t apply to you as you’re paying your own water and sewer costs for your own equipment.

This meeting is about full-cost recovery within the water and sewer rates. Provincial legislation dictates municipalities must move to this— meaning the money that comes in from water / sewer rates and development charges has to cover all the money going out to pay for staff, materials and replacement of materials and infrastructure. While the legislation has passed, its rules have not yet come into effect— the county has gone through this exercise so it is prepared when the rules come into effect.

There are a few different ways to do this—

1. Cover your operational expenses with the regular income and cover capital (construction / replacement / renovation) expenses by mortgaging it. This means you have to build financing costs into your rates.
2. Cover operational expenses with rate income and capital through use of reserve funds— meaning you have to set aside those funds in previous years and those amounts are folded into rates.
3. Cover operational expenses with rate income and capital through a mix of mortgaging and reserve funds.
4. Cover operational expenses with rate income and don’t do any capital until it actually breaks. After it breaks and you have to fix it, find a way to pay for it then.

The consultants’ report recommends option two in the above list— it’s the ’save for a rainy day’ option that ensures the funds are in the bank when a pipe or plant or filter is due for replacement. Not everyone on council (or even amongst area municipal staff) agrees with this philosophy or this option.

Some just look at the dollar amounts involved and scream bloody murder.

I will be tweeting the meeting Thursday, and of course there will be followup coverage in the Sentinel-Review.

Skate/bike park RFP posted

The City of Woodstock has posted the request for proposal for the skate/bike facility at Sutherland Park. It’s due Nov. 27, and calls for design services for a firm to lead the “design process and the implementation of plans through construction for a combination skateboard and BMX-type bike park to be built in the City of Woodstock at Sutherland Park.”

The RFP also indicates the $350,000 set by council at its Oct. 15 meeting is “core funding.” From the document:

To provide a flexible design with several potential sizes and estimated prices that can be expandable beyond the core funding depending upon the final level of funding and or support achieved complete with illustrations showing the expansion capabilities and anticipated final value of the larger designs.
…
The successful firm must show flexibility and potential growth in the design concept(s) and estimated pricing to provide for a potential increased  expenditure of the project based on the acquisition of other funding (i.e.) grants.  Experience and knowledge of community fundraising will be a key component of the selection process.

Time lines listed in the document show a short-list developed by the end of this month, followed by interviews in December and a decision to hire a consultant and begin the final design by the end of December. A draft report on the final design would be expected by February.

I think this RFP document meets the needs and requests of what the users who’ve spoken to council wanted and also what council’s discussions have borne out.

Woodstock Art Gallery— go-forward report

This Thursday should be an interesting Woodstock city council meeting, with a go-forward report on deck for the proposed renovation of the city owned 449 Dundas St. property (the former downtown Shoppers Drug Mart) into the Woodstock Art Gallery’s new location.

The 35-page report is severed from the rest of the council agenda and posted here for review— be warned it’s a 2MB report as it contains a number of scanned pages of handwritten text from the comment forms.

As mentioned above, the comment forms received by the city at the two public open-house style meetings held in October are appended to the report from community services director Bob McFarland. Looking at them, 24 state support for the project at 449 Dundas St. Six state opposition (either to the 449 Dundas proposal or overall opposition) and there was one that just had questions so I couldn’t conclusively place it in column A or B.

The sign-in sheets from both nights show 42 names, however I am aware there were people present who did not put their name down on the sign-in sheet. I missed the second meeting due to scheduling, but heard there were people present who may have an alternate option of using the Build Canada funding (which would be permitted under the grant rules with a council motion) at the gallery’s current location or possibly a third locale.

The opponents, vocal as they are, continue to insist “everyone” they speak to is opposed to this project. When challenged on why they didn’t bother to show up, all I received was poor excuses saying “it’s going to happen anyway, so why bother.” I don’t get this position of opposition combined with disengagement from the public process. Look at other public-interest issues where there is staunch opposition, such as industrial wind turbines as one quick example. The opponents don’t back down. Blogs and websites exist, the campaign lives on regardless.

Some councillors are opposed to this project and some are in support (I did a breakdown based on previous votes in a previous post here). For those who are in support the opponents need to be a little more visible, I’d say.

Roundabout ready for takeoff

This week is the big week the roundabout at Oxford Road 17 and Oxford Highway 59 will be opened to traffic after a five-week shutdown of the intersection for construction.

The roundabout a few weeks ago

The county sent this photo along a few weeks ago, and has it posted on the roundabout pages of its website. The Sentinel-Review took to the air Monday morning for a fresher aerial shot of the intersection, look for it in the coming days.

On Tuesday, the dignitaries will gather at the still-closed intersection, cut a ribbon of some sort and then drive around and around and around, I imagine. The reconstruction was done with funds from the federal gas tax, so I imagine MP Dave MacKenzie or a rep will be in attendance as well as the usual assortment of county pols.  Media will also have an opportunity to get dizzy doing the same thing.

I continue to be astounded by the number of people both opposed to the roundabout and who claim their vehicle won’t fit through it. I find the latter claim hard to believe, but I will ask Tuesday whether there is a vehicle too large to make the turns.

The roundabout is scheduled to open to regular, routine traffic at 6 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 4.

The week ahead: Nov. 2-6

This is what I’m aware of this week.

Monday, Nov. 2

• Township of Zorra, OMB appeal of “Robinson Pit” starts today in council chambers, 27th Line and Oxford Road 119 and is expected to last a few weeks. It also ended today with a settlement.

Tuesday, Nov. 3

• Township of Zorra regular council meeting, Beaty Room of the Oxford County Library’s Thamesford Branch, Dundas Street in Thamesford, 9:30 a.m. Unsure if the meeting remains at the library now that the OMB hearing is over.
• Township of South-West Oxford regular council meeting, council chambers in Dereham Centre, 9 a.m.
• Media event for opening of roundabout at Oxford Road 17 and Oxford Highway 59, 10:30 a.m.

Wednesday, Nov. 4

• Township of Blandford-Blenheim regular council meeting, 21 Wilmot St. S. in Drumbo, 9:30 a.m.
• Township of East Zorra-Tavistock regular council meeting, council chambers, Loveys Street in Hickson, 10 a.m.
• Public opening of the roundabout, 6 p.m.

Thursday, Nov. 5

• County of Oxford committee of the whole meeting (water and wastewater rates), Oxford County Administration Building, 21 Reeve St. Woodstock, 1 p.m.
• City of Woodstock regular council meeting, council chambers, 500 Dundas St., 7 p.m.

A couple of the agendas hadn’t been posted yet when I drafted this– notably the one for the water/sewer rate committee of the whole meeting at the county on Thursday and the city agenda. The link for the county meeting has been updated, including the 149-page reports from Hemson Consulting and Genivar for all you insomniacs out there. The city agenda is now linked properly as well.

The rates meeting is to examine and provide some direction on how the rates beyond 2010 should be set. The rates for 2010 have already been set, so this meeting is to determine how much of the rate will be for reserves, financing, along with the actual operational and volumetric costs. No rates will actually be set at this meeting, its purpose is to examine the background reports and understand what the rates should include. Council will set the rates at a later date.

This Thursday is also supposed to be the go-forward report on the art gallery and 449 Dundas St.— given an interesting solution came forth at the second public input meeting, there may be some options presented that would still allow the grant to be used, but not necessarily involve the 449 Dundas St. location.

October update to ‘Open your doors, Oxford’

So I spent the bulk of the day Friday updating the charts and graphs behind the pages “Open your doors, Oxford,” originally published on Sept. 18.

A couple of interesting things. First, looking at the number of in-camera sessions, the City of Woodstock now holds the title, having both the fewest number of in-camera meetings and the lowest percentage. Zorra is now in a solid second place— the difference coming in the summertime meetings where Woodstock held fewer in-camera sessions than Zorra. At the other end of the spectrum, South-West Oxford continues its trend of meeting behind closed doors at every meeting, even as it held three meetings over the summer (most Oxford municipalities only hold two over the summertime).

Second, if this matters, I’m using some different software to produce the pie charts. Hope they’re clearer and easier to read as a result.

While the countywide chart above refers to October as the end date, there is inconsistency among the municipalities. Why? Because some October meeting minutes were already posted or sent to me whereas others have not yet been confirmed by council and have not yet been posted. This is all compiled using publicly accessible information, so until it’s posted, I can’t input the data and update the chart.

One thing I’ve started to do, at the request and suggestion of East Zorra-Tavistock, is a measure of how much time councils spend behind closed doors. Staff in the township actually went back to Jan. 2008 and did the analysis for EZ-T, Woodstock and Oxford County, but I elected not to use it (mostly because I had difficulty integrating the data into my existing Excel worksheets without basically starting over). So the time is in there, but it doesn’t yet go back to Jan. 2008. Also, I couldn’t do it for some municipalities (I’m looking at you Tillsonburg, Norwich and Zorra) because the publicly available minutes don’t include the times when council entered and exited closed session. I also had to assume Woodstock’s in-camera session times go from the time stated on the agenda until the cameras start rolling at 7 p.m. because the minutes don’t record what time the in-camera session adjourns.

I can’t find the clause in the Ontario Municipal Act where it says the record of meetings needs to include time, but someone left me with the impression these records need to include that element.

Enjoy the latest update— the next one should come within the month and as I find time to work back and add the times from Jan. 2008 – June 2009, I will.

On bag tags

Readers here have likely heard by now Oxford council voted to increase the cost of a garbage bag tag from $1.25 to $1.50 effective May 1. The S-R story published Thursday is here.

As always, context is king and there is limited air time and newsprint space available to review all the previous chapters in a story when a new chapter is written. Here, I can review all those chapters and weave a tighter storyline than Thursday’s printed article could ever have done in the 450-word space it was granted.

Chapter one involves going back to the 2009 Oxford budget, particularly in the time frame after council asked for the waste management (garbage, large and special item collections) to be separated from the recycling budget. Pay particular attention to the $227K variance on the second page under user fees — that’s revenue from bag tags. The county finds it tough to predict annual sales because very rarely do people buy tags on a weekly basis for the garbage they set out. They buy in bulk or strips– like me, I bought 10 bag tags in Feb. 2008 and I still have one left. Also, if our reduce, reuse, recycle message is working, we’re buying fewer bag tags because we’re hopefully producing less garbage. Then look at the 39% increase in operating costs, due to the bevvy of new garbage collection contracts signed in 2008.

Of note, you should also peek at the $600K transfer from reserves on the first page to balance out a loss in sale of recyclables, although council asked for the sheets this way so that page one doesn’t impact page two. That was done to balance the 2009 budget for what’s presented on both pages.

The next chapter in this tale comes Aug. 12, when council considered and voted to support the recommendations in this report, in order to bring garbage collection and disposal to a user-pay system. The chart in Appendix A (page 4) is particularly useful with the scenarios it presents showing ever-increasing costs against the choice of either raising bag-tag fees, taking the amount from general taxation or raiding and by 2013 depleting its reserves– at which point, you’re back to option A or B. Of note is also the comparison to other municipalities in the appendix. Oh, and in municipalities where there are no bag-tag fees, it’s because the entire cost to you of collecting your trash is based on the value of your property, not the actual amount of trash you produce.

The report considered Wednesday is a subsequent chapter. Again, the charts first seen Aug. 12 have been updated, with the third scenario now including some calculation for a potential drop in bag tag sales after an increase of $0.25 — since if you’re like me, you’ll be out buying a bunch in the last week of April before the hike. Again, this time with input from the waste management steering committee, the palatable option is to raise bag-tag fees so the amount in the “collection and disposal expense” line matches the “bag tag revenues” expense, with the other revenues and the levy covering the cost of recycling and special programs. It never quite gets there in the chart, but this is where we should be heading.

That way, we all pay property taxes for no-fee collection of recyclables (a good thing) and for large- and special-item collection programs. However, I don’t want to pay higher property taxes on my home to cover the cost of collecting the single 24L can I set out once a month (I’m a bachelor and produce very little garbage) along with the three big-0range bags you set out every week. I’d rather pay my single-use fee every time I set my 24L can and not cover the cost of your three big-orange garbage bags a week worth of rubbish.

Were we duped into believing the bag-tag was covering 100 per cent of collection costs when it was introduced? Perhaps, since we can now see it’s never covered 100 per cent of those costs. Pissed about the increase? You’ve every right to be.

However, if we move to a full user-pay system for solid waste collection and disposal, you’ll control how much you spend on garbage. Paying too much? Produce less garbage.

The week ahead: Oct. 26-30

Here’s what I’m aware of so far:

Tuesday, Oct. 27

• Township of Norwich regular council meeting, council chambers Otterville, 7 p.m.

Wednesday, Oct. 28

• County of Oxford regular council meeting, Oxford County Administration Building, 21 Reeve St., Woodstock, 7 p.m.

Based on its schedule, the Town of Tillsonburg council should also be meeting today, however I couldn’t find the agenda posted online.

This Wednesday’s county council meeting launches the five-year review of the county’s official plan, the document containing the policies that guide planning and development within Oxford’s borders. The 10-page report was posted and distributed under separate cover last week.

Warden Paul Holbrough is also addressing the Woodstock District Chamber of Commerce in the annual ‘Breakfast with the Warden‘ event, which is a ticketed event, Tuesday morning at 7:30 a.m. at the Quality Hotel and Suites in Woodstock.