What happened to public consultation?

Good evening Mayor, Deputy Mayor and Councillors,

My family has resided in and has been actively involved in the Tiny Township community for 5 generations. We have had many different councils over the years, some were excellent listeners and encouraged residents’ participation and public engagement.

Unfortunately, for Tiny residents, that is not this current Council. Your approach is top down, we know what is best for Tiny and we really don’t want input from the community. The first example of this was with the Strategic Plan. No opportunity was provided for community input into the Strategic Plan. There was only a single public meeting ; however, the community wasonly to OBSERVE proceedings and was not allowed to be involved. is it any wonder that not one person from the community bothered to show up for this “check the box” exercise?

NO PUBLIC CONSULTATION? Why not? This community has in the past been invited to give their input on Strategic Plans.

For example, in 2015, in a community newsletter former Mayor George Cornell stated, “the Strategic Plan will not be developed by the Township of Tiny Council, Staff or the Consulting Team in isolation---it will be developed with the community.” As a result, the Township provided a number of opportunities for the residents to be engaged in the process such as town hall meetings where open debate and discussion was encouraged and respected.

This is the kind of partnership with Council that our Community has experienced in the past, what residents reasonably expect from you and, frankly, what they deserve. That’s where you missed a huge opportunity to welcome the community in and work with them.

The same “top down” “we know what's best for you” approach has also been followed by Council in connection with building a new township hall, building new library facilities as well as terminating the reciprocal library agreements with our neighbouring communities.

The most glaring example of this ‘‘closed door” approach is the new town hall project. The consideration of this project began with the prior Council in 2016. Rather than holding open meetings on this project, Council set up an in-house “assessment needs building committee” which in my view was intentionally structured so that its proceedings could be held without public observation, attendance or input. However, you could and should restructure this committee so that its proceedings are open to the public.

Next, I suggest an alternative would be to put everything on hold due to the challenging economic times we find ourselves in and put the $400,000 for architects and the new town hall into the underfunded asset management program.

Tiny Councils (including this Council) have continuously boasted that we have one of the lowest tax rates in Simcoe County. The truth is that the only reason our taxes are lower than other municipalities is that Tiny provides less services to its residents. You don’t provide major infrastructure such as water and sewers and Simcoe County picks up the cost of maintenance for manyTiny roads, including in particular County Road 6.

Now that I have dispelled the myth of Tiny being a special low tax haven, I want to focus on the frightening trajectory of tax increases at the municipal level forecast over the current term of this Council. We start with a 10.82% municipal tax increase in 2023 and an estimated increase of over 10% for 2024. If we assume only a modest tax increase of 5% in each of the 2025-2027, we end up with a total tax increase at the municipal level of over this period of more than 40%-creating an outrageous, unaffordable, and unacceptable burden on this community.

What is even more frightening is that these numbers do not include the servicing cost of the infrastructure debt for the new town hall and library. However, its not too late to reverse the disaster course this Council is on. Forget the unaffordable projects like the new Town Hall and a library, which are neither wanted or needed by our community, focus on providing basic services to the community on an efficient and affordable basis and, finally and most importantly, continually engage with the residents by both listening and responding to their delegations. This is really what our community wants and expects from its elected officials. Thank you. I would be pleased to address any questions or comments you may have.