While it will be cold comfort to the beleaguered tax payer, both newly sworn-in councillors that arrived fresh to Shire Hall or earned a return trip thanks to voters didn’t show up planning to pass on a healthy tax increase in the first of their four year term. Like the taxpayer, councillors pay taxes themselves- either directly to the Shire Hall coffers by way of the levy or through rental agreements that will more than likely rise at renewal time. So it behooves them in the pocketbook to deliver for their constituents at budget time.

Did council deliver for Prince Edward County on budget deliberations? On the face of it, a 7.9 per cent increase over the 2022 budget would indicate no but the devil is always in the details when it comes to dollars and sense at Shire Hall. Councillors, fresh faced and otherwise, get pulled into the minutia of municipal legalities and benchmarks of service this time of year.

They listen to the demands of constituents and columnists alike and are then presented with facts, figures and potential liability scenarios from senior staff who can be as savvy and smooth as the most experienced card dealer the Thousand Islands casino has to offer.

And that’s not to say the information passed along at budget time isn’t fulsome and accurate. In a governance role, how can councillors start picking away at increases to the water/wastewater budget, have the word ‘Walkerton’ mentioned and not get a cold chill running up their spine?

In this litigious, CYA society we’ve crafted for ourselves, going above and beyond the bare minimum standard tends to ease the burden of proof most of the time.

Where would one start trimming when eyeing this operating plan? Maybe slicing and dicing our roads budget and letting the County’s highways and byways become as pockmarked as Normandy beach in spring 1944 would lead to the Province reinstalling the program that covered 90 per cent of operations and contained a subsidized annual road work application process. But here’s betting the Government of Ontario would want to trade back the ODSP/Ontario Works commitment they took on in exchange for roads in 1998. And while you can horse trade with roads and push maintenence and rehabilitation schedules around, it’s not something easily done with regular social service transfers.

Maybe a trade would be an immediate net win for the County coffers. Then maybe the Government of Ontario would pass legislation that brought those ODSP/Ontario Works rates up to the standard of living in this province and anyone can see where this direction would lead.

Deny the doctor recruitment fund? The passing of Dr. Peter Johannsson, a stalwart of healthcare in our community, means a quarter of our citizenry will be without a practicing physician within a few months. Let H.J. McFarland Memorial Home twist in the wind and not recover the Long Term Care beds lost in the Picton Manor fiasco?

To some degree, your humble scribe has been a prisoner of municipal sentimentality ever since the futile amalgamation war was fought and lost in Prince Edward County back in the late 90’s.

But it can’t be any clearer than now with the County’s 2023 operating budget about to swallow nearly $60 more this year on $100,000 of assessment that there needs to be some drastic measures made to stem the tide and keep some small semblence of what was past so we can confidently stride into the future.

As a farm kid, I can remember high years and low years. High years meant family vacations, new(er) equipment and an expansion of owned/rented farm land. Low years meant doing more with less. Trading down tractors. Maybe even giving up that land that was secured not so long ago.

Prince Edward County is in a down year and with Bill 23 gifting nearly one per cent of the tax levy to developers for at least the next five years by way of reduced development charges, it’s going to continue this way. Maybe the gift gets made up on the back end by way of furthering the tax base. But for a community that’s stayed static at around 25,000 for the last century, it’s difficult to see light at the end of that tunnel.

It pains this corner to write these words but it’s time to start looking at what we really need as a community and what can go to the four winds. Halls, property, services, etc. Provincial directions, inflation and uncontrollable forces have put Prince Edward and other municipalities in Ontario into dire situations.

It’s laudable Council has kept the mechanisms to help low income earners while trying to maintain services. But now it’s time for leaders to make headway, table the tough decisions and follow through on action plans that will buck the tax increase trend and make it somewhat easier to live here. Otherwise, they are going to hear about it. Loudly.

-Jason Parks

PICTURING OUR COMMUNITY

The annual Community Carol Service in December hit all the right notes in its return and the funds raised from the event will Back the Build of the new Prince Edward County Memorial Hospital. Recently, organizers presented the PECMH Foundation with proceeds from the event totalling $1,300. Pictured are (from left) Rosemary Moore, community carol service co-chairperson; Barbara McConnell, chairperson of the PECMH Foundation; Pat Bentley, co-chairperson of the community carol service; Reverend Brian Nicholson from the Picton United Church and Sally Cowan, Back the Build campaign cabinet volunteer. (Briar Boyce photo)