Hastings Drive Down Zone Meeting Highlights

In case you missed the Hastings Drive Downzone Meeting on April 15th, 2014 at Norfolk County Council and don't want to spend the $22.50 for the DVD we've taken a few highlights on the discussion and posted them on www.youtube.com for you.

For those of you coming into the game late there's a pretty serious battle going on over property uses on a small piece of beach properties in Norfolk County.  In the mid 1980's a storm hit Long Point and caused serious destruction.  According to Long Point Biosphere there were 40 cottages destroyed on Long Point and another 15 on Hastings Drive.  The owners of the destroyed cottages on Hastings Drive were not allowed to rebuild after that and a temporary road was put in to allow the remaining cottage owners access.

Norfolk County's Reserves Are In The Toilet.

Last nights Norfolk County Council meeting exposed yet another financial boondoggle that will surely cost Citizens.  The upgrades at the Simcoe Wastewater Treatment Facility will now come in at a cost of $3,851,845.98

The pre-tender estimate provided by Muhannad Bagajati of RV Anderson & Associates was $2,650,000 but it was a lower amount that went into the actual budget.  The original budget had a provision of $2,375,000.  We're not exactly clear why it was posted short by $275,000 to start with.  Is this what Mayor Dennis Travale meant when he said 'we have a very very very tight budget to deal with' at the budget meeting?

Hastings Drive and the Hazard Land Zone

The infamous Hastings Drive lot owners vs double standards has just taken another turn.

This was posted late so that no Citizen's can be deputized to fight for their rights which was also the case in the 4th Concession closing.  Up in front of Council tomorrow evening is another zoning debacle known as the Hasting Drive Property Rights Removal.  Make a note Council also starts early for this one in an effort to avoid Citizen's being able to make it on time.  It's a 4PM start and in the agenda is the Hastings Drive rezoning issue.


Agenda :

https://norfolk.civicweb.net/Documents/DocumentList.aspx?ID=144128

Hastings Drive Issue :

https://norfolk.civicweb.net/FileStorage/F1F0529A64D44B0FA0477C4BB3E43702-DCS%2014-42.pdf

Losing faith in Canadian Charities.

This is an email that we received from a concerned Citizen who has been following the work that we have been doing where we expose practices by certain charities that we consider - regifting.

Our work on educating Citizen's by using data obtained from the Canada Revenue Agency will continue.  We are working on a grading system so people can see how efficient their money is being spent once it's been sent to these charities.  There are many charities that do great work but there are also some that appear to exist only for their own benefit.  Stay tuned.

I spend a lot of time reading Canadian newspapers and can’t believe what I am reading lately regarding our charitable organizations.   The face of most of our large charities has changed and I begin to question the integrity of even those that have managed to stay out of the papers.  

Norfolk Council Meeting - April Fools Day

A very interesting Council Meeting last night and, unfortunately if you missed it, you will now have to pay the $22.50 for the DVD copy.  It's really too bad that Citizen's in Norfolk are not able to watch their County Councilors performance at their own leisure.  We're sure that the existence of the Cloud and other forms of storing data could be utilized to alleviate this inconvenience.   It's a great way for Citizen's to keep abreast of what is happening in their respective Ward.

One comment that we must make is, that if you only have a short time to watch the episode, that round table discussion at the conclusion of the meeting is likely your best bet.  It was great to watch as the Councilors explained their Ward's successes and issues.  Hearing Mr. Geysens invite Citizen's to the Langton Figure Skating Events and Mayor Travale mention the Big Brothers and Big Sisters Bowl for Kids Sake events were a refreshing change from the mundane bylaw issues of norm.  Seeing our elected officials promoting our local events is exactly the kind of sales pitches needed to sell people on rural living and bringing together our community.

Norfolk County has it's own Salt Road

Tomorrow's Council meeting agenda will include a Road Salt Tender.  Fittingly it's on April Fool's Day!

In our analysis of Norfolk County's financial woes we've discovered many things but the one that jumps off the page the most is the cost of Public Works.  Everything in that department is so expensive and the work we've seen is substandard.  Even the Managers make a killing and have been regulars on the Sunshine List  and are exempt from accountability.

A budget to this Department is just a mere suggestion and Council has repeatedly be unable to reign in spending.  This department run's itself and tells Council what to do and how to do it.

We've been asked by Citizen's to expand on our road report to compare costs of Winter Clearing and that report is forthcoming but we need to start at the top.  Road salt.  Norfolk County uses 18,000 tonnes of it each winter on average.  Since the Road's Department was unable to fill out the MMAH FIR properly (or on purpose) they do not post how many road km's that they are responsible for.  We'll take the data from previous years that was included to come up with what we think is correct.  Norfolk County has 4130 total lane km's according to our calculations.  We'll provide backup for our estimate in our next post.

Norfolk County's 2013 Sunshine List

Norfolk County 2013 Employee Sunshine List

 The Provincial Sunshine List was released today and Norfolk County had 17 staff workers that made the over $100k per year club.  The total for keeping these high priced workers totals $2,015,833.12.  We've posted what they made in 2012 as well so you can see if they received raises or not.

In a few cases there was a drop in wages.  Was this based on performance or lack there of?  We know that our Roads Manager, Bill Cridland had some of his wages reduced.  Could that be because he's managed to run his department into a $30-million hole?

If that's the case how would you explain the raise that Eric D'Hondt received?  His department seldom comes within budget but he enjoyed an almost 4% increase for a poorly performed job. 

Conservation Ontario - Part 2 - Per Capita Expenses

Asked by many Citizen's if we could provide the information on what it costs to maintain Conservation Ontario on a per capita basis, we've compiled the Top Ten List.

This list represents the Conservation Authority's with the highest expense per person in the Province of Ontario. We've also included the Management Cost per person. It appears that the North Bay / Mattawa CA was unable to provide the proper tax return to the Canada Revenue Agency so Management Cost was never entered. This is hardly surprising since there is no oversight or accountability for these rogue authorities. The 'Per Capita' information was obtained from Conservation Ontario but none of the Annual Reports that the CA's put forth match the population data.