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.

The Cost of Council

The tally is in and Norfolk County Council's tab is set before tax payers.  The total cost to have 8 Councilors and a Mayor comes in at just under $280k for the year.  Council salaries on average are around $25k.  Compare this to the high priced staff and one has to wonder if it's a deal or not.

Both Keith ROBICHEAU and Eric D'HONDT make over $140,000 per year.  Combined those 2 Sunshine List Leaders cost as much as our Mayor and entire Council!

Wetlands or Pool?

Were you recently one of the many property owners that have seen their properties become part of a Wetlands zone?  If you're a property owner in Norfolk County, you are not alone.  It appears that the Long Point Region Conservation Authority has arbitrarily expanded the wetlands / hazard land boundaries.

Usable lots are no longer able to be developed and even irrigation ponds became part of a wetland.  With Norfolk County changing it's bylaw's, the LPRCA felt that this would be the opportune time to remove owners rights after paying taxes for all these years.

Our research team has come up with a caveat that you can expose to be able to use your land once again.

Environment Canada Tightens Tap on NCC

In the 2014-2015 Plan and Priority Report coming from Environment Canada it appears that the Federal funding tap has thankfully been tightened up on The Nature Conservancy of Canada.

The increase between 2013–14 forecast spending and 2014–15 planned spending is mainly due to:

increased planned spending for the SDTC Foundation;
increased planned spending for the Action Plan on Clean Water initiative;
decreased planned spending for the Nature Conservancy of Canada;
and decreased planned spending for the Clean Air Agenda.

Sustainable Development Technology Canada (SDTC) is a not-for-profit foundation that finances and supports the development and demonstration of clean technologies which provide solutions to issues of climate change, clean air, water quality and soil, and which deliver economic, environmental and health benefits to Canadians.

Winter on the Farm

Conservation Ontario - Facts and Figures

Conservation Ontario is a network of 36 rogue agencies across Ontario.  According to Conservation Ontario there are 31 agencies in Southern Ontario and 5 in Northern Ontario.  Conservation Authorities were created by the Provincial Act in 1946.  It's high time that this Act was revisited.

In our quest to keep the public informed we decided it would be a good idea to see how much 'Conservation' costs the Citizen's of Ontario.  Thinking that in this day and age with all of the government buzz words like transparency and accountability, it should be a straight forward task of just asking the overseer's for the financial data on their group.  That didn't exactly work out for us.  The financial information was not available.  If you are lucky enough to find it on the various websites, the data just simply does not match the pretty annual reports that are put out.  We decided to just go straight for the truth and pulled all of the annual tax returns that are filed with the Canada Revenue Agency.  The facts and figures are staggering.