User fees and costs – Scripturient

Collingwood Needs a Communications Director and Plan

Yesterday, the Town of Collingwood sent out an email trying to rationalize the town’s budget and tax increase. That release underscores in so many ways why townhall desperately needs both a person and a plan to oversee and guide its communications. And this is coming from someone who also believes the town should freeze all new hiring and stop building personal empires through staff acquisitions in our municipal bureaucracy.* As a former editor and writer, and someone who still collects and reads style guides and … click below for more ↓

Council’s Affordable Housing Con

2023-12-04 2023-12-06 Collingwood / Council / Housing / Planning & Policies / User fees and costsOne Comment

A recent story in CollingwoodToday has the headline, “Town considering increases to development charges.” Everyone knows that increasing the development charges (DCs) adds to the cost of a new home, making housing even more expensive and less affordable. Right now, it’s extremely difficult to find anything even close to “affordable” in Collingwood. Apparently, the town wants to make it even harder and more expensive to buy new homes… unless, of course, you’re already a millionaire with money to burn.* The proposed increases include (emphasis added): … click below for more ↓

Council’s Frenzied, Deranged, and Expensive Obsession Over the SVJI

2021-04-21 2021-04-24 Collingwood / Council / Saunderson's MPP campaign / Saunderson's Vindictive Judicial Inquiry / User fees and costs12 Comments

Three hundred seventy-nine boxes and one hundred binders. That’s what EPCOR has delivered to town hall for town staff to comb through looking for… well, no one knows yet. Maybe heffalumps. And it will occupy a considerable amount of the time for the town’s $216,000-a-year CAO to go through them looking for those elusive heffalumps. And the electronic records have not even arrived, which are probably as voluminous as the paper records. Keep in mind that this is the same material that was gone through … click below for more ↓

Council Rewards Its Friend. Again.

2021-04-06 2021-04-06 Collingwood / Conflicts of Interest / Council / Disrespect and bad behaviour / Entitlement / Saunderson's Vindictive Judicial Inquiry / User fees and costs4 Comments

Our council has found yet another way to reward its friend, despite the recommendations in the report from the Saunderson Vindictive Judicial Inquiry (aka the SVJI) warning about “apparent” conflicts of interest with friends. Page 7 of the full SVJI report states (emphasis added): Councillors and staff should avoid providing or appearing to provide preferential treatment to close friends and family. They should not conduct municipal business or encourage the municipality to contract with individuals with whom they have a close relationship. Recommendation 42 states … click below for more ↓

The $100 Million Mayor?

2021-02-10 2021-02-10 Collingwood / Council / Financial follies / Saunderson's MPP campaign / Saunderson's Vindictive Judicial Inquiry / Taxes / User fees and costsOne Comment

In a story on CollingwoodToday, our mayor, Brian Saunderson, shrugs off the costs of his Vindictive Judicial Inquiry (the SVJI) as being but a drop in the bucket for the town’s annual budget: He noted the town’s annual budget is nearly $100 million, and the inquiry costs amount to less than ten per cent of the yearly budget. Perhaps he was flustered by being challenged over the egregious waste of taxpayers’ money on the SVJI and just pulled that budget figure out of his hat. … click below for more ↓

A Municipal Challenge to Democracy?

2021-02-02 2021-02-02 Collingwood / Council / Deceit / deception & secrecy / Disrespect and bad behaviour / Entitlement / Ethics and behaviour / Planning & Policies / Publicity & Communications / Saunderson's Vindictive Judicial Inquiry / Staff and administration / User fees and costsLeave a comment

Collingwood has joined other local municipalities asking the province to revamp its Municipal Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (MFIPPA; a guide from the Information and Privacy Commissioner to the Act is also available here) to make the process more restrictive and less open. While some of those changes might seem appropriate to outsiders, I see buried in the wording of the request some dark challenges to our democracy. The story in Collingwood Today is titled, “Freedom of information rules ‘archaic’ and in … click below for more ↓

Small town rules

2018-10-17 2018-10-17 Collingwood / Council / Development & Growth / Election 2018 / Taxes / User fees and costsOne Comment

In their book, Small Town Rules (Pearson Education Inc., USA, 2012), authors Barry Moltz and Becky McCray explain seven rules for businesses that use the model of a small town to offer advice on growing and maintaining a business n the “connected economy.” And while most of their rules are aimed at businesses, I suggest some are equally applicable to small towns like Collingwood. Don’t get me wrong: a municipality is not a business and despite some common functions and shared accounting techniques, a municipality … click below for more ↓

Doherty’s Magic Money Fairy

2018-05-04 2018-05-06 Collingwood / deception & secrecy / Ethics and behaviour / Planning & Policies / Taxes / User fees and costs3 Comments

At 3:55:20 in the video of Monday’s Collingwood Council meeting, Councillor Deb Doherty utters the self-congratulatory claim that she is “glad” the costs of the upcoming judicial inquiry to pursue the Block’s maniacal conspiracy theories are not coming out of “taxpayer funds on an annual basis.” I can hear your head shaking. Where does she think money comes from? And since taxes are calculated yearly, is there any other sort of taxation aside from an “annual basis”? Well, read on… This bit of financial wisdom … click below for more ↓

Alectra says no: The Block screwed us again

2017-11-10 2017-11-10 Collingwood / Council / Disrespect and bad behaviour / Ethics and behaviour / Taxes / User fees and costsLeave a comment

The headline on the media release reads, “Alectra selling its shares in Collus PowerStream to Collingwood.” What it should add is that Collingwood residents and taxpayers were betrayed by members of their own council and administration. After a three-year campaign to screw us, The Block have won a major victory in abhorrent behaviour. They are privatizing our electrical utility and next year will do the same to our water/wastewater utility, to the same corporation. Our publicly-owned utility will be sold to EPCOR, an out-of-province, for-profit … click below for more ↓

The Block are privatizing our public assets

2017-09-30 2017-10-05 Collingwood / Council / Development & Growth / Disrespect and bad behaviour / Ethics and behaviour / Planning & Policies / Staff and administration / Taxes / User fees and costsLeave a comment

So Brian and his Block minions want to sell our airport. Our publicly-owned asset. And they’re doing it without even the pretence of the courtesy to tell us why. No public input, no public engagement, no open discussion over it. In the flaccid Connection story, it notes, In November, 2016, deputy mayor Brian Saunderson asked Clearview Township Deputy Mayor Barry Burton if his municipality was interested in taking over operation of the airport. As usual, the slavish local media drool over their buddy Brian, but … click below for more ↓

Utter contempt at council

2017-07-19 2017-07-19 Collingwood / Council / Ethics and behaviour / Planning & Policies / Taxes / User fees and costsLeave a comment

Utter contempt. That’s what The Block showed for process at council, on Monday night. And for ethics. And for you, the residents. Utter contempt. But when they want to give benefits to their friends or themselves, boy do they rise to the occasion. Which of course they did, Monday. Anything for a buddy, no matter what negative effect it has on residents. No matter how it will exacerbate ill will in the community, or create bad feelings towards town hall. No matter what it will … click below for more ↓

The test of integrity

2017-07-12 2017-07-13 Collingwood / Council / Ethics and behaviour / Taxes / User fees and costs4 Comments

I’ve been complaining all this term that Collingwood’s standing committee system is broken. It is redundant, ineffective and expensive. It continues in use only because it was the brainchild of the interim CAO who The Block worship. But it is about to come under a test: one that will determine the integrity and ethics of both the system and The Block. On July 10, the Corporate and Community Services Standing Committee received a report on the services of Fire Marque, an insurance collection agency. The … click below for more ↓

EPCOR’s rate hikes create unrest

2017-02-07 2017-02-07 Collingwood / Council / Development & Growth / Taxes / User fees and costs / Utilities: electricity and waterOne Comment

It seems EPCOR isn’t the most beloved utility service out there, despite the glowing comments the interim CAO made to staff recently. I was given a recording of his hour-long talk (aka sales pitch) for EPCOR and I can only say I hope no one listening fell for it (I’ll review his talk in another post). Despite his stumbling blandishments, EPCOR’s management style isn’t all that popular. And if you do some searching for unflattering news stories about the corporation, you can find the following … click below for more ↓

Monetizing our public assets

2017-02-04 2017-02-04 Collingwood / Council / Ethics and behaviour / Publicity & Communications / User fees and costs / Utilities: electricity and waterOne Comment

In the town’s disingenuous press release (really just a sales pitch for EPOCR) about its obsessive drive to privatize our utility services, it has this paragraph: The Town’s RFP process solicited proposals from a wide range of potentially interested parties that could maximize the value of the Town’s remaining investment in Collingwood PowerStream Utility Services Corp. Given the terms of the existing Shareholder’s Agreement with PowerStream entered into by the previous Council, the Town has very limited options regarding how it may monetize its remaining … click below for more ↓

Will the Block’s hypocrisy never cease?

2017-01-29 2017-01-30 Collingwood / Council / Ethics and behaviour / Taxes / User fees and costsOne Comment

Last term, when they were raising their pitchforks to storm the bureaucratic castle, the members of today’s Collingwood Council – those we disparagingly refer to as The Block – were loudly castigating the former council for having once done a sole-source deal with the company that was the only Canadian supplier of a product in the whole country. Some said we should have gone further afield, to American sources. We were evil, they told their cadre of supporters, for not going to tender, or other … click below for more ↓