PtboCanada's Chalk Talk is a snapshot of people's favourite thing about Peterborough. Watch for us around town as we would like to feature your favourite thing too! In this edition of Chalk Talk, Mayor Daryl Bennett was very enthusiastic about "The volunteer spirit of Peterborough!"
[Contributed by PtboCanada's Evan Holt]
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The Friends of Jackson Park and the Friends of Peterborough Trails have compiled a list of the Top 10 Reasons Not to Build a Road on the Parkway Greenspace. Here they are...
1. The Parkway is not a solution to our traffic problems
The proposed Parkway fixes perhaps one-tenth of our traffic problems in the north end of the City. It links one fifth of the City’s planned north end residential areas to only one of the two main employment areas in the City. The City proposed the original "Parkway" route to bypass the city limits as they were in 1947. Other options better connect the places where we live to the places we work.
2. The Parkway Greenspace is one of Peterborough’s most precious assets
The Parkway Greenspace corridor is the largest and most significant natural habitat and open space in the north end of Peterborough, and one of the largest areas of green space in the City. It is a key part of the City trails network. The Parkway route also serves as an important wildlife corridor, along which wildlife can traverse a large swath of the city. It allows citizens, and most importantly our children, to observe wildlife and connect with nature.
3. The Parkway is not the best investment of our hard earned tax dollars
The projected cost of the Parkway is around 40 million dollars. This does not include costs to deal with noise, flooding and other infrastructure. Realistically, the price could be easily around $50-‐60 million. Do you want your taxes increased to pay for a road that doesn’t meet Peterborough’s needs; a road a majority of us don’t want, all for a time saving of one to three minutes? We have other critical spending priorities, including fixing the many poorly maintained roads we already have.
4. When given the opportunity to actually choose, the people of Peterborough said “No Parkway”
The Parkway has been a contentious issue in Peterborough for many decades. It was turned down by 55% of voters in a referendum in November 2003. Following that vote, City Council ordered the Chief Administrative Officer to have the Parkway removed from the Official Plan. This did not occur. Why was the voice of the people not respected and the why was the direction of Council not acted upon?
5. The Parkway Greenspace promotes a healthier population
Greenspace encourages people to get outside, to walk instead of drive, to interact with each other and connect with the natural world around them. Greenspaces are proven to support a better sense of community and improved mental health. The greenspace provides a place for city children to explore and play, for free, no matter what their financial means. We have an obesity epidemic costing us billions of dollars and untold health problems. Do we need to make the situation worse?
6. The Parkway Greenspace supports our children and our schools
There are five schools along the Parkway corridor. The Parkway will run directly alongside two primary schools. Putting a major arterial road directly next to or near these schools increases risks to students. Also, a main arterial road will eliminate safe opportunities for students to learn about science and nature, conduct their own research and experience outdoor education in a natural setting.
7. Previous consultants said we don’t have a problem, now or in the future
In their report to City Council on April 18th, 2011, consultants Morrison-‐Hershfield reported that even with no road improvements beyond those presently committed, the best performance models for 2031 show no significant congestion except around river crossings. This congestion is not addressed in any of the proposals related to the Parkway.
8. We are not growing as fast as projected so do we really need a new road?
Growth projections prior to the 2012 Comprehensive Transportation Plan turned out to be optimistic, and current slow economic progress and an ageing demographic may impact the projections used in the 2012 Plan.
9. The Parkway Greenspace supports Provincial planning directives
A 2012 Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing Provincial Policy Statement on Land Use Planning requires all municipalities to have and protect natural heritage systems that include natural corridors and linkages such as Jackson Park and the Parkway Greenspace corridor. A decision to build a road through these natural corridors would be contrary to such provincial directions
10. Paving the Parkway Greenspace will certainly lead to a bridge through Jackson Park
You only have to look at the incremental history of the “Parkway by Stealth” campaign to see that this will happen (despite the promises it won’t). When the southern and northern parts of the Parkway are finished, do you think they will leave a big bend around Jackson Park between the two?
If you believe in permanently protecting the Parkway Greenspace and Jackson Park, please let your councillor know. Alternative 2 (Fairbairn/3rd Line) is a far more effective route than the Parkway for connecting the places people live and where they work and shop, now and in the future. The Fairbairn/3rd Line route will not see the destruction of our precious greenspaces and makes even more sense given the many fewer residences affected and the proposed Lily Lake housing development.
Join us at the next Parkway EA meeting Thursday, June 27th from 4:00 pm -‐ 9:00 pm at the Peterborough Wellness Centre. This is the last time you will be able to ask questions about the route before the final proposal is presented to City Council in September!
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[Contributed by PtboCanada's Evan Holt]
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Old Jim's location
[UPDATE: Jan 23rd: The Shoppers Drug Mart decision has been delayed.]
Here's a letter Trent professor Stephen Hill sent to the Mayor and city councillors—and cc'ed the media on—about the redevelopment of Charlotte Street between Aylmer and Bethune...
"Dear Mr. Mayor and City Councillors,
I write regarding a report coming before Planning Committee Tuesday evening about the redevelopment of Charlotte Street between Aylmer and Bethune.
I am opposed to the proposed site plan for the following reasons:
I am also concerned that last week's staff report to you (PLPD13-007) suggests that Council has already approved a preliminary "concept plan" for this site. I note to you the following passage on page 4 of the staff report:
"Staff have proceeded to process the Site Plan Application as though the concept site plan, already approved by Council, is a decided matter. The location of the building, the massing of the building, and the placement of the parking lot has been based on the approved concept site plan."
In my opinion, this is a mistaken presumption by city staff. Council minutes from December of 2011 make clear that the land conveyance is contingent upon a site plan agreement in keeping with "the general intent" of the concept plan that was presented at that time, not the concept plan itself.
"That the conveyances of City property and the improvements to municipal property be detailed in a site plan agreement and further, that the conveyances not occur until a Site Plan agreement has been executed for a redevelopment of 242-248 Charlotte Street and 321 Aylmer Street in keeping with the general intent of Appendix B, attached to Report PLPD11-081." (recommendation d)
This was confirmed in an email exchange between your Director of Planning and myself from last year (to which you were all copied). In that email, I was assured that "Council has only agreed in principle to the sale and exchange of certain municipal property in order to establish a parcel of land that is large enough to support a development of the scale proposed. The sale will only take place once Council has approved a site plan that captures the intent of the development concept presented" (emphasis added).
In my opinion, the general intent of the concept plan is for Shoppers Drug Mart to be on this parcel of land. The general intent implies nothing about the massing of the building or the placement of the parking lot, as suggested by the staff report.
While only Councillors can know with certainty your understanding of recommendation (d), I am concerned that the 18 January 2013 staff report infers decisions about the site plan that were not, in fact, made by Council. Indeed, because recommendation (g) of the December 2011 minutes - an amendment made during the meeting - requires the site plan return to Planning Committee for final approval, it seems fair to assume that the initial concept plan was not "a decided matter."
I would be pleased to discuss any of these matters with you further. I note also that I have copied this email to members of the local media who have written about this issue in the past - I expect your decision on this will be followed closely by many people in Peterborough.
I thank you all for your ongoing hard work and dedication to the city's governance and continued prosperity.
With kind regards,
Stephen Hill"
Photo of the corner lot Shoppers Drug Mart in Newcastle, Ontario. Photo: Evan Holt
Photo: Evan HoltPeterborough Mayor Daryl Bennett today released the following statement to media:
GOYETTE'S BACKROOM BRIEFINGQ: Why does it seem that decisions are made so slowly at City Council? –Bill, Peterborough
Goyette: The question is fairly general in nature, so I am going to respond in kind.
First, the conventional wisdom. Government is slow. In a race with a turtle, it would strike a subcommittee to review the risks associated with winning. The file is under active review. It will be determined in the fullness of time. The perception of lethargic government is so fully ingrained in the broader culture that we presume it to be self evident. And it is undeniably rich territory for the jester: “If it was forced to proceed through City Hall, the aging process itself would be slowed down.”
Because speed is relative, we see the measured march of the public sector in relation to the hustle and headway of the private sector, and the comparison is not flattering. Neither is it fair, and here’s why.
Unlike the private sector, the public sector is not driven by revenues, margins or profit. Its shareholders have expectations that go well beyond financials to include every aspect of public life, the breadth and complexity of which cannot be denied. As a result, government becomes a pleaser and a purveyor of inclusiveness, generating practices that necessarily chew up time. Government operates in a fishbowl, and that means it has to present favourable processes as well as favourable services. Those processes are extensive and often imposed by other governments. Government leaders understand that the most meaningful and grounded decisions—the ones that are likely to come back and bite you—are those that result from genuine community consultation and input, which takes time.
I am not an apologist for slow government. Neither are most people I have met who work in government, the vast majority of whom want to be part of a prideful organization. The issue has to do with the manner in which the above noted public sector characteristics are perceived by public sector workers. Unfortunately, some will use those characteristics as a rationalization for inefficiency, creating a culture of acquiescence and resignation.
To my mind, the answer lies in accepting the reality that government proceeds at a pace designed to serve its uniquely public purposes. The trick lies in creating a workplace culture that resists the temptation to let constraints become crutches, and pays permanent homage to the idea of doing things better. And faster.
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David Goyette is the Executive Assistant to Peterborough Mayor Daryl Bennett. Email your burning questions for David about City Hall to feedback@ptbocanada.com.
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GOYETTE'S BACKROOM BRIEFINGQ: What happens during the closed door meetings that sometimes happen before (and delay) City Council meetings? —Elizabeth
Goyette: We begin with the principle that the business of the public must be conducted in public. The democratic underpinning for this has to do with both the watchful inhibition of wrongdoing and the ethical promotion of accountability through transparency. Public exposure of government decision making increases public trust and decreases the invitation to impropriety.
Nonetheless, this fine principle can easily bump up against the practical realities of government decision making. A public meeting about a personal matter involving an identifiable individual may offend his or her right to privacy. A public meeting about a lawsuit may reveal information harmful to the case or offend solicitor-client privilege. The Ontario Municipal Act (Section 239.2) permits meetings or parts of meetings of Council or its Standing Committees to be closed to the public for situations like these, and the City of Peterborough’s procedural bylaw identifies nine such situations. The most recent of these was added last year, with some debate, having to do with education and training for Councillors.
Here’s what happens at a “closed session” meeting.
The meeting is held in a Committee Room, and begins in public or “open session,” followed by a vote of the Councillors to close the meeting to the public. Staff presentations frequently take place, and staff reports are printed on bright yellow paper to identify them as confidential; they are not publically distributed. The procedure for the meeting follows that of an “open session” meeting with the notable exception that formal voting by Councillors does not occur: a direction may be given to staff; a straw vote may be held to judge the will of the Councillors; or a consensus may be reached through discussion. The reason for the avoidance of a formal vote is optics—that is, the laudable avoidance of the perception of deal-making behind closed doors.
When the Councillors come out of the “closed session” they head into the “open session,” typically in the publically accessible Council Chambers. Public reports are distributed by the Clerk on the matters that have been agreed to: these are prepared and edited in advance to respect the confidentiality that brought them to the “closed session” in the first place. Councillors may speak to these reports in the “open session” before they are voted on, but rarely do because of the challenge of respecting the confidential elements of the matters they have just dealt with. The formal vote then takes place in public.
Many observers register surprise when they first come across this closed door process, because it appears to offend the highly desirable principle of transparency. In time, they come to see it as the necessary practice that it is: a means of permitting the City to protect its own corporate interests by meeting in private, but only when it would be harmful or prejudicial to those interests to do so in public.
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David Goyette is the Executive Assistant to Peterborough Mayor Daryl Bennett. Email your burning questions for David about City Hall to feedback@ptbocanada.com.
Tip us at tips@ptbocanada.com. Follow us on Twitter @Ptbo_Canada (hashtag #bethechangeptbo) or Like us on Facebook.
Q: How do you deal with the challenge of permanent professional staff who have conflicting ideas of how our 
City should run compared with a temporary and yet democratically elected Council? –Michael VanDerHerberg.
Goyette: Michael is an owner of the wonderful Silver Bean and the proprietor of Peterboroughcareers.com. He indicates that his question arises from a DBIA presentation on a new public square for Peterborough. It also goes to the heart of decision making in local government.
The three traditional branches of government—legislative, executive and judicial—enjoy separate and independent areas of balanced responsibility, all functioning at the will of and in support of the electorate. City Hall deals primarily with two of these branches: the legislative branch (elected City Councillors who make laws) and the executive branch (appointed public servants who administer laws).
The fundamental distinction is that Councillors represent the value laden and often short term views of municipal electors, while public servants represent the objective and often long term interests of the municipal corporation.
Of course, the two groups work together and are reliant on each other. In their working relationship, the lines of responsibility inevitably flex and blur, based largely on the forces of personality, culture and the corporate appetite for change. Manageable conflict can be expected to arise as a result of differing perspectives: short term interests versus long term interests; popular opinion versus professional expertise; popular spending versus prudent financial management; publicity versus privacy; innovation versus inertia; the fanciful versus the practical.
Conventional wisdom holds that the best decisions are obtained when the two branches are in comfortable balance. My own experience is that the executive branch—appointed public servants—are more likely to be dominant in smaller municipalities and those with part-time Councillors. With larger municipalities and full-time Councillors, the legislative branch tends to exercise more authority.
As I see it, the City Peterborough is now experiencing a change in this balance involving a strengthening of its legislative branch. Elected Councillors now have computers, smart phones, tablets, IT support, their first-ever modest discretionary budgets, and staff dedicated to assist them in their work. This is, I believe, a very healthy trend that will provide Councillors with resources of the sort already made available to the local MP and MPP.
Like any relationship, the key to success is to ensure a fair balance of responsibility and to create conditions conducive to mutual respect and compromise. In the ultimate expression of that relationship, and to the extent that we value representative democracy and electoral accountability, City Council is always supreme.
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David Goyette is the Executive Assistant to Peterborough Mayor Daryl Bennett. Email your burning questions for David about City Hall to feedback@ptbocanada.com.
Tip us at tips@ptbocanada.com. Follow us on Twitter @Ptbo_Canada (hashtag #bethechangeptbo) or Like us on Facebook.
Q: Could Peterborough set the pace as the first municipality to adopt “Gender-Based Budgeting?” –Betsy McGregor
Goyette: Betsy is the federal Liberal candidate for the Peterborough Riding and a compassionate supporter and coach of Special Olympic athletes. Her question follows on an International Women’s Day article published at Mykawartha.com by the Peterborough & County Older Women’s Network, of which she was an author.
The concept of gender-based budgeting is both innovative and challenging. The movement gained some traction in Australia in 1984 before it was shut down there in 1996. Advanced by feminists and progressives interested in gender equality, it has had occasional implementation elsewhere. The idea is that the process used to develop a budget is made to include an assessment of the impact of that budget—primarily its expenditures—on women and girls.
For example, do the expenditures set out in the City of Peterborough operating budget favour men and boys over women and girls? When the City spends tax dollars on the West 49 Skateboard Park on McDonnell Street, is that a disproportionate or unfair benefit for boys? When it spends tax dollars on parent and tot programs at the Sport and Wellness Centre, is that a disproportionate or unfair benefit for women?
Budgets are more than just the allocation of dollars to priorities; they are expressions of values. And values are never neutral. Nor are budget makers or elected decision makers. Budget making is an art as well as a science, and there is no doubt that imperfect budgets embody the imperfection of unintended bias. There is also no doubt that a budgetary lens on gender bias would serve as a tool for advocacy for women’s rights and the promotion of gender equality.
The central challenge for Peterborough is not how the City would go about viewing its budget through a gender equality lens—we could create a model for that—but how we would accommodate all the other deserving lenses at the same time, such as expenditures by neighbourhood, by age, by income, by population density, by accessibility, by ethnicity, by disability, by health or environmental impact, and on and on. That splintered house of mirrors would so blur the budgetary vision as to render it sightless.
It seems to me that the answer lies not in the creation of a better budget device, but in the promotion of a better budget lobby. Organize and advocate. Show up when budgets are being developed. Reveal the wrong. Describe a better end state. Make it real and personal. Be seen, be heard, be passionate and be compelling. Make your case to those who are elected to be the guardians of community values. In the end, social change has more cultural grip when it is motivated by reason and emotion rather than compelled by technique.
People issues are best resolved by people pressure.
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David Goyette is the Executive Assistant to Peterborough Mayor Daryl Bennett. Email your burning questions for David about City Hall to feedback@ptbocanada.com.
Tip us at tips@ptbocanada.com. Follow us on Twitter @Ptbo_Canada (hashtag #bethechangeptbo) or Like us on Facebook.
Q: We’ve had high unemployment and prices keep going up. What kind of social issues do you deal with through the Mayor’s Office? –Rennie Marshall
Goyette: Rennie—the person who asked this question—was a candidate for City Councillor in Monaghan Ward in the 2010 municipal election. She is an inveterate political groupie and informed City Hall watcher. (A Cityhallic?)
Municipal government and its association with the delivery of social services has long been a moving target.
In Ontario, the first framework for local self government came about as a result of The Municipal Corporations Act of 1849, better known as The Baldwin Act. At the time, cities and towns had a limited role in providing social services that was focused on the funding of charities. The modern welfare state in Ontario really got underway in the late 19th Century with the Great Reform government of Oliver Mowat, at a time when poverty was associated with a moral failing that was remedied by “Houses of Industry and Refuge”—the original poorhouses—or jail.
Toronto hired its first “Relief Officer” in 1893. Compassion for First World War disabled soldiers and their families led to the introduction of a number of social services such as Mother’s Allowance and the first public pensions, as did the Great Depression that gave rise to a variety of employment related benefits. Civil and human rights movements have propelled the modern municipal agenda that now includes social assistance, housing, hostels, employment, counselling, child care, wage subsidy, nursing and homemaking—the bulk of which are mandatory and cost-shared between the City and the province.
When people ask what issues we deal with in the Mayor’s office, my answer is all of them. Our role in the field of social services is to provide cooperative leadership in setting an agenda, choosing priorities, finding the balance between compassion and fiscal responsibility, reviewing reports and agendas, liaising with staff, preparing reports and motions, advocating with other levels of government, communicating the City’s plans and programs, and carrying out constituent relations.
It’s this last category of social service that Rennie likely has in mind. People communicate with the Mayor every day, and some of them do so in person and unannounced. On their arrival at the Office—which they often see as a place of last resort—they are sometimes confused, resigned or despondent. Some recent examples we have dealt with involve personal issues of homelessness, food, inability to pay bills, family violence, child custody, depression, addiction and banishment from agencies. (There are also the angry, like the person who mailed his parking ticket payment to the Mayor in a large, heavy envelope containing 80 carefully and individually wrapped loonies.)
It may come in different forms, but it’s all social service.
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David Goyette is the Executive Assistant to Peterborough Mayor Daryl Bennett. Email your burning questions for David about City Hall to feedback@ptbocanada.com.
Tip us at tips@ptbocanada.com. Follow us on Twitter @Ptbo_Canada (hashtag #bethechangeptbo) or Like us on Facebook.
[UPDATED: As per reader comment, it wasn't an Occupy Ptbo event] This afternoon, a democracy rally was held across from City Hall at Confederation Park. Here's pics...
[Contributed by PtboCanada's Julie Morris]
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