A small Ontario town isn't happy with its council's grandiose new spending plans. Sound familiar, anyone out there?
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By Lawrence Solomon
If Ontario allowed recall elections for out-of-control local governments, the new mayor and council of Tiny Township would quickly be turfed.
Residents in Tiny — which does actually go by that name, given to it in 1822 by Lady Sarah Maitland, wife of Upper Canada’s lieutenant governor, in honour of her pet spaniel — are up in arms over the local council’s empire building, which includes a 74 per cent increase in the 2024 budget to run the mayor and council offices and a 121 per cent increase for administrative services. This decidedly non-tiny spending spree has led to an eight-plus per cent tax hike for 2024 which, following an even greater hike in 2023, produces a two-year increase of 20 per cent.
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The specific focus of residents’ outrage, though, and the impetus for thousands in this township of 5,434 families to sign a petition and for hundreds to turn out to demonstrate at Tiny’s offices, is a proposed new administrative building that symbolizes the rot at city hall.
Tiny’s current 11,000-square-foot administrative building, built in 1967 and expanded in 1987, is a solid brick structure that, according to a consultants’ report, is generally “in very good condition.” Though it is equipped with a new HVAC system, it needs additional improvements costing an estimated $198,300. The report cautioned that although “interior finishes and fixtures … including flooring, painting, plumbing fixtures, partitions and millwork are in fair to good condition … these components experience normal wear and tear and have a finite service life. Considering their age, it is expected that they will require renewal or replacement within the next six to 10 years.”
The notion of making do with an aging building didn’t sit well with the mayor and council, however, who claim their existing offices are so cramped as to mistreat their staff. “It is cubicle-hell,” asserted Mayor Dave Evans. Moreover, the mayor and council want a near-doubling of space to house the army of Tiny bureaucrats expected to service the township’s population growth. The upshot: $400,000 for architects to design a building of, “at minimum,” 21,000 square feet, followed by untold millions to construct the environmentally sustainable state-of-the-art building that Tiny’s burgeoning staff and future residents supposedly deserve.
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The consultants’ report listed 18 “significant negative effects on functionality” that council say justify its decision to condemn its present building. For example, No. 8: “The image and function of the reception area is compromised, and there is no sense of a public lobby. There are concerns with privacy and/or harassment of front counter staff. The current layout is not well defined, causing confusion and uncertainty for casual users. The space often results in impromptu meetings in the lobby that require greater discretion or privacy. There is no space for display of public information or programs. The reception areas are not connected to related departments.”
And, No. 13, “The public washrooms are located too close to the front counter, resulting in a sense of loss of dignity and privacy.”
To remedy these fatal faults, which have evidently been demeaning Tiny’s town folk for the past half-century and more, the consultants recommend that the new building more than double the size of the lobby and provide washrooms to suit. Yet as any visitor to Tiny’s offices can attest, vanishingly few residents have cause to visit the administrative building. Its parking lot rarely has more than one car in it and the building’s reception area is typically all but empty.
Tiny residents are all the more inflamed because they feel blind-sided by a capital project that was developed in committee meetings closed to the public and went unmentioned in the past municipal election, only to be subsequently sprung on them by the mayor and council. While Tiny’s politicians prioritize feathering their nest, its residents daily dodge potholes and face a $50-million backlog for infrastructure.
Tiny’s bureaucracy doesn’t need to bulk up — it needs to slim down. Tiny’s population did grow during COVID, when many Ontarians fled cities for rural areas’ perceived safety, but that trend is reversing itself. Other trends also suggest less office space is needed. Many township functions — from obtaining parking permits to applications for building permits — are now performed instantly online, while township staff continue to work from home post-COVID and rural municipalities are moving to staggered days in four-day work weeks.
Tiny’s politicians may have unusually grandiose plans but local governments are out of control everywhere. Municipal spending in Ontario has long been outpacing income, inflation and population growth. (And, of course, the latest federal budget is hardly an exercise in thrift.)
If the Doug Ford Conservative government, which prides itself on looking after the common folk, can’t rein in its municipal offspring, it should give local voters the tools to look after their own interests. Recall elections would quickly discipline the unaccountable pooh-bahs who think a win at the ballot box gives them licence to pursue vanity projects rather than provide the basic services taxpayers need and value.
Lawrence Solomon, a founding columnist at FP Comment, owns a cottage in Tiny Township. LawrenceSolomon@nextcity.com
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