PICKERING: Mayor’s TOWN HALL…first impressions…not worthy of high praise

Congratulations and kudos to Mayor Ashe for trying to give Pickering residents the opportunity of speaking with him, but not in the true sense of speaking with him. It was a telephone town hall where callers posed their questions and the Mayor responded.

My first impressions are that I found the Town Hall unsatisfying.

First, the moderator or gate keeper censured the questions. The questions put to the mayor were “soft,” none demanding tough consideration or challenging replies. The mayor dealt with 17 calls, none were really demanding.

The majority of the questions dealt with city expansion and growth and how the city was preparing to deal with it. The answer was obvious: the PLANNING DEPARTMNT is responsible for dealing with these items planning and preparing for them. Succinct, simple and straightforward.

Taxes
The usual lament, too high. Callers who had done their homework would understand, as the mayor painfully explained: the city’s share of tax income is is limited. He pointed out Pickering’s tax increase was the lowest of the cities in the region at just over 3%. Tax increases are inevitable given ongoing growth and increased demand for the City’s response to greater needs and demands. The city must deal with demands that constantly grow with expansion everywhere: health, traffic regulation, housing and infrastructure, police and fire response. Ashe emphasized the city is constantly trying to expand its business tax revenues to reduce the dependency on property tax, much easier said than done, as overtures to the business community take time and effort. Taxation will always be a problem the city recognizes and works to ameliorate for everyone’s benefit.

Censorship
Indisputably, telephone town halls are a dynamically unfolding event that needs a traffic moderator. The one used in this event, nameless to save him some agony, didn’t regulate. He censored. Tough questions like the one I posed regarding how the City was legally dealing with the accusations of ‘corruption at the top levels without evidence or corroboration’ was never broadcast. It should have been posed as it is a turmoil that has received national attention. The top level personnel of the city executive have been accused of corruption without evidence of it. Call me corrupt as a civil servant…you’ll hear from my lawyer, post haste. 

The moderator likely couldn’t verbalize what was being posed. Yet that city turmoil is so notable it has hit the national news. Surely it is impacting seriously and negatively on the spirit and effectiveness of council meetings. Guess it was one of the hard-to-deal with questions, eh, Mr. Moderator. Were there others? Never to be known with this kind of town hall.

Town Halls have merit and value. However, their history demands a different type than those once held in the town square, where the residents gathered and shouted out questions. That would be chaotic now and impossible. The closest Ashe has come to doing such a Town Hall is when he held them at a coffee shops in Pickering. Close to 150 people crammed his last one, in a small coffee shop, questioning the mayor and followingup with secondary questions. Not done in the telephone town hall.

Maybe the Mayor has to consider alternative ways of keeping City residents informed:

Central library Town Halls would allow for larger crowds and be more like the town halls of old.

Could the Mayor consider doing monthly podcasts, something along the lines of the YouTube videos. 

Text publication works best for people as people can access at will, read at their own pace, and pause to evaluation and consider. The City’s webpage would work for this. Practical, constant and available on demand. The ideal answer. Publish all the information online: the tax structure, the planning, the city responses, the words of the Police Chief, the Fire Chief, the City’s chief accountant. [Read my interview with Fire Chief Stephen Boyd on my website at www.szpin.ca to get my meaning.]

Disappointingly, as one of your most astute councillors has said, you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink…in regard to people accessing the City’s website for information, build a better site and they will come…make it simpler, more succinct and easier to assimilate. They will come. Word will spread and they will come. Those missing the information will hear of their loss and they will come.

There is much room for improvement but the ball is in the mayor’s court.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor, for the constructive and monumental effort at opening your doors to your residents.

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