Trying to keep abreast of all the breaking news these days is like playing whack-a-mole: no sooner does a Mike Duffy vs the PMO story break on the National than another report from the Water Review Committee hits the local headlines. Lesser news like exploding warehouses in China, shootings in America, ISIL attacks and an American petrol refinery shutting down for annual maintenance pop up to share space and time with the election campaign. The only good news is that the Jays are ahead of those damn Yankees. Don’t swat that mole.
We expect stories about weather and mishaps with the environment; bears being shot and hunted; lions decapitated only for their good looks; and another annoying Kardashian story. We expect stories about highway and waterway accidents, drug use and missing people. But why do we feign surprise at the news coming out of Ottawa or City Hall in North Bay?
Heck, we all knew about the corruption of some Senators and their expense reports. It has been going on for decades. And by doing nothing, we gave our unspoken consent for it to continue. At least that is Duffy’s line, and now it appears, the line of Nigel Wright in his testimony. That the PMO tried to cover up the malfeasance really ought not to have surprised anyone who takes the slightest interest in our politics. Nor should it surprise us that all involved will try to claim innocence and have no knowledge of the events. The more often our PM says, “I know nothing,” the more I’m not inclined to believe him for indeed he doeth protest too much.
And so, it is baffling to me that we are paying heed to this as ‘news’.
In 1978 when I was appoint as City Water Commissioner (a ploy to hire another accountant) we, the City, knew how much water was being used by the metered users. We also knew how much water we were pumping out of Trout Lake. Some previous bureaucrat had set a price for metered water and we continued to use that value (less a discount for more water used) for many years. We had no idea of how much water we used in flushing, fighting fires or simply leaked into the ground. Using a completely illogical method of counting taps and outlets, we assigned a cost to each household, charged them accordingly and forgot about equity of use.
All was flowing as it should until someone too
k up the cause of fairness and equity of charging for water (and sewage) used. The only solution was to install meters so we could charge for water used, not a system based on the number of outlets, or indeed, the size of the thing the water flowed through. Alas no one seemed to take into consideration that we still had no idea (or if we did, never made it public) of how much water was missing from the equation of water pumped and water metered.
As far as the accountants were concerned, all that mattered was that they collected enough money to pay for the water distribution and sanitary sewer system That a small part of that cost came from metered water was only a figure to balance the books. However once we knew how much water was going through the residential system, we needed a real figure for the commercial/industrial side – plus all that ‘lost’ water.
This is a baffling question for the Water Review Committee. Apparently there is no other city that has faced this dilemma to use as an example. There is no one on the Fifth Floor who can write a cheque (unlike the PMO who had Mr Wright) to cover the missing water. Like Senator Duffy who did not know where he lived, we do not know where our water is avoiding the meters. Maybe we should just put our ‘fixed’ costs on a special line on the property tax bill – like we did with the Rail Land / Waterfront.
Maybe we should just charge users for the water they use, not for the size of the thingy going into the building. Of course that might raise the issue of how equitable our property taxes are. Could we put a meter on that too? We might prefer to be charged on the number of calls to police, fire, ambulance, garbage pick-up, snow removed - you get the idea . . .
How about them Blue Jays, eh?
