Pulling the Plug

I should probably bite my tongue or at least slap my fingers with a wet noodle, but it is too hard not to comment on the City pulling the plug on the Wind Study. Only a year into the two-year study to access if there was enough wind blowing over the rocks south of Laurier Woods to set up a wind farm, the results were so poor that the study was stopped. The study was funded by a $50,000 donation from the public and a contribution from the private sector.

The City undertook this study despite knowing that it was likely to prove useless. The previous manager of North Bay Hydro had already talked to a technician from a company that had assessed the North Bay area for an electricity-generating wind farm. The wind charts showed that the only possible places for a wind farm were in Lake Nipissing near the Manitou Islands or on the hills just northeast of the now infamous Otter Lake. In both cases, the consistency and velocity of the wind barely met the requirements, and because of the locations, neither site was considered suitable. At that time, North Bay Hydro shelved the idea until changes in generation technology might be reason to reassess the wind power for electricity generation.

City Hall, it seems, decided to waste taxpayer dollars on a wind study with nary a blink of the eye. Now they have pulled the plug on another of their pet peeve projects: The Health Unit. After spending some more of our tax dollars, not only in interest charges, but also in the legal costs (we are paying the cost of lawyers, administrators, clerks, judge, etc on both sides of the lawsuit). The $5,500 dollars in late payment interest charges will come off your municipal property taxes next year; you will pay the rest of the costs by April 30 via your income taxes, or if you are on the weekly payment plan, through the sales taxes at the mall.

The City may have already pulled the lawsuit against the Conservation Authority but that bold foray into the world of lawyer’s fees no doubt left another little dent in our reserves. The legal fees paid in settling personnel severances are properly buried in some innocuous budget line, as they should be, but one wonders what the real costs to the taxpayer is for our legal challenges and defences.

Council would very likely love to pull the plug on the deal the City made with DND to keep 22 Wing in North Bay. However, given that the mayor has already clashed in court with the folk from DND, he may want to wait until they sell him that Hole in the Hill for a dollar before we go to court on the property maintenance issue with the CFB. It is too bad the council of the day did not get a taxpayer grant to study the feasibility of maintaining the housing and infrastructure at the Base before they signed that deal.

It makes one wonder if our councils are operating under that old management philosophy that says that if you did not have any grievances from the union, there is something wrong with the contract. If you do not have any lawsuits simmering on the back of the stove, you are not being a good council cook.

Now there is a staff report that says council ought to pull the plug on funding the (Heritage) Festival. Council (we) ought not to be in the concert business, but they could provide the infrastructure for a summer weekend party. There are three excellent city venues (Memorial Gardens, the Capitol Centre and Waterfront) that could be host sites for events and the City could support a Festival by providing budgeted support for the use of these sites. Pulling the plug now is not the right thing, but lowering the funding level in the tub is a sensible move.

Pulling the plug on a project is often the best thing for council to do. However, is there any accountability for the events that led to getting into a questionable project in the first place? Do we need a Municipal Accountability Act? We could hire Harper and Co as consultants…