by Klaus Rohrich
October 29, 2004
Last week I had occasion to visit the Ontario Ministry of Consumer and Commercial Relations on Toronto's University avenue. The purpose of my trip there was to renew the registration of a business trade name. Like all government offices I have encountered in recent years, this one had a plethora of desks, all outfitted with telephones and computers, but a remarkable lack of staff visible. I purposefully went near the end of the day, imagining that by this time there would likely not be lineups. Wrong! The line was longer than ever, as two civil servants attempted to deal with nearly 30 people wishing to register trade names. In one case, a paralegal working for a lawyer had to stand in line three times, as the clerk behind the counter would only accept four registrations at a time from any one person, despite the fact that each registration netted the government $80.00. When it became my turn I remarked that there were an awful lot of empty desks, to which the clerk replied that many of her fellow workers were "on break".
Surely everyone reading this has had some experience in dealing with government at all levels. People who have never applied for a health card, a passport or a building permit have lived a sheltered life. Those of us, who have ever had to deal with government offices and their employees, know that it isn't an experience one wants to engage in on a regular basis.
While the federal and provincial governments appear to be the most prevalent so far as visibility in the news media and elsewhere are concerned, the most intrusive and bureaucratically insensitive in my opinion is local government. City and county governments affect our daily lives more than any federal or provincial government and yet the quality of those in office seems to be far below that of our elected federal and provincial representatives, if that's possible.
What follows is my own personal experience with my own community. I'm sue that the place where I live is not unique in providing hair-raising if not humerous accounts of the follies of municipal government.
In my municipality the town council is so far out of touch with the needs and desires of the local citizenry that it gives one cause to wonder if they're even from the same planet. We have a serious taxation problem in that our municipal taxes are the highest in the province of Ontario. If this isn't bad enough, the town council, which consists of over 50% retired teachers, has a spending problem. While our municipal services are in steep decline, council finds it wise to reduce the number of parking spaces in our nearly dead downtown core to "preserve the historic character" of the town. all the while the town's citizens are paying $2.50 per bag to have their garbage hauled away and $50.00 per year to have their recyclables picked up at the curb.
It is a reflection of the law-abiding nature of our citizens who instead of dumping their trash on the roadside, pony up the funds to have their garbage picked up. a strong case could also be made in favour of considering our citizens "marks", as they continue to elect the same losers at every election, although it's difficult to seriously fault them given the fact that not enough well-qualified people run for local office to give the voters much choice.
Last year, the town built a visitors' kiosk at the entrance to the town in the belief that it would make a good impression. While the sentiment is admirable, the math behind it stinks, as the taxpayers forked over in excess of $280,000 to have the kiosk built. We're not talking the Taj Mahal here; it was merely a structure consisting of a series of columns with beams spanning them and an unstaffed information kiosk at the centre where visitors can look at a city map and advertisements for various attractions. I'm sure the kiosk made an impression on both of the visitors who stopped to look at it, but that it was a good impression is debatable.
The year previous, the town spent several hundred thousand dollars installing new sidewalks and plantings at municipal parking lots, making them smaller in the process. The sidewalks were elaborate affairs made with interlocking stone that became loose and presented a safety hazard after the first winter. This past summer the town spent a fortune on hitching posts as strategic locations downtown, despite the fact that there are no horses allowed in town.
another area that our city fathers have decided to involve themselves is the area of dcor. Several stores in our downtown have been advised by building inspectors that they do not like the colours of their doors, trim, or building fronts. There are two things that I am not aware of: the first is that I did not know that building inspectors were qualified colour consultants, and the second that the legal mechanism whereby a city official could force a property owner to change the colour of his door existed.
One of the key attractions of our town is our fabulous harbour and attendant marine facilities. During the summer literally thousands of people visit our town by boat and spend the night at our harbour. The town fathers in their infinite wisdom have decided to demonstrate to these visitors that our town is a paragon of friendliness by delivering the daily paper along with coffee and muffins to all visiting boats that spent the night in our harbour. This is a sure way to keep visitors from entering the town proper, as they don't even have to leave their boat for a morning coffee.
an effective way of dealing with budget shortfalls that doesn't harm existing taxpayers is to increase the tax base. again, in our town that's a dicey proposition as our councilors are finding hundreds of new and innovative ways to say "no" to developers who want to develop land and build homes. It's difficult to understand why this would be, as each new home built and occupied generates a development fee of nearly $10,000 and then generates property taxes in perpetuity.
anti-smoking laws abound, as the town wants to make sure that all of us live a long life, so that we can continue to pay municipal taxes. It's gotten so that smoking bans, which were once only for places like restaurants and theatres, have now found their way into the great outdoors, as our community has banned smoking on all municipal property.
It's a given that at this rate, our government officials will soon be inspecting our underwear with a view towards taxing those whose dainties don't pass muster. We are living in a society where a mud puddle can be deemed "significant wetlands" with an attendant development prohibition, where despite the highest per capita expenditure on public health care the treatment lines keep getting longer and longer and where a retired school teacher can be responsible for driving elderly people out their homes through high property taxes.