ward3brighton.ca

Council gets lobbied occasionally on specific issues by specific groups, but usually on a reactive, issue by issue basis. Volunteer boards will coordinate email and phone campaigns during the budget process to make the case for their grant requests; the Advocates for This Park or Friends of That Park can be very forceful in making their preferences known; members of business groups and other outside agencies are appointed to City advisory boards to protect their interests, etc. But the bulk of the communication we get, at least that I get, is from individuals with their individual ideas, opinions, requests and complaints.

Earlier this evening, during a chat initiated through the “Chat with Rob” feature on this blog (which is becoming more and more popular), my anonymous chat partner — known only to me as the person who comments on the Guardian website as “PFA” — directed me to scaledown.ca, a blog that aims to “promote the cultural identity, social fabric and economic prosperity of Windsor, Ontario through open discussion and grass-roots advocacy.”

While scanning that site I found this post about the formation of a Downtown Resident Association. While we do have Downtown Charlottetown Inc. here, it is very much business oriented. Although I don’t live downtown myself, I do work there and I live close enough to feel I have a stake in its continued vitality and livability, so I find the idea of a group like this very appealing, both from my points of view as a resident and a councillor. As the author of the post points out:

If we go to the decision makers to voice our opinions, visions, and complaints by ourselves, we likely aren’t going to get anywhere. But one unified voice representing many – that’s power in any democratic setting. 

In fact, I’d welcome any number of associations that could engage and advise council. There are many talented and creative people who, speaking as one voice, could influence council to make better, more progressive, more informed decisions. How about the Charlottetown Amateur Urban Planners Association?

The City of Charlottetown is soliciting proposals for hosting the city’s website.

Update: download the RFP document here.

I found a memo in my mailbox at City Hall yesterday with stats on the total number of meetings in 2007, and each councillor’s attendance record. It includes public meetings and standing committee meetings, but I did notice my Youth Advisory Board meetings were not counted in my total. I don’t have it in front of me, but I don’t recall seeing Committee of the Whole Council meetings either, which is a substantial number. In any case, I “officially” attended 48 meetings last year (second most, behind two councillors tied at 50, I might add).

What this definitely does not include, is the informal meetings I attend regularly with neighbourhood groups like Advocates For Victoria Park, or school principals, or the Canadian Cancer Society, or anyone else that needs to bend my ear on some issue. Or fundraising events I volunteer for. Or the conferences and AGMs where I speak to bring greetings on behalf of the city. Or the vacation days I use to attend conferences or visit city employee locations to launch our new Corporate HR Plan. Or the many hours I spend answering phone calls and emails. Or the time spent personally shoveling snow for people (long story). Or flipping pancakes.

I say all of this only to give some indication of the time commitment involved, because among the most frequent questions I get are variations of “Does it take up much of your time?”, “Are there a lot of meetings?” or “Do you get many calls?“. It’s all good fun though. I enjoy the job.

I’m on the mailing list of a company called CivicPlus that apparently builds websites for various levels of governments. I didn’t ask to be on this list, so I assume every politician with a publicly visible email address has been spammed by these guys. Not that they don’t occasionally provide a nugget of wisdom, but the very definition of spam is email you didn’t ask for. I could always unsubscribe, but I digress.

Tonight I received the first issue of their e-Gov Gateway Newsletter, an “e-government and website management resource for local government officials.” This item in the newsletter caught my eye:

Technology Spotlight: Blogging Towards an Open Government

Since that is, theoretically, what I do here, I clicked through to their website to see how I measure up. They offer 6 tips for new local government bloggers to keep in mind. They’re specific enough to be useful, and generic enough not to scare people away from the idea.

So here’s my own self-appraisal of how well I’ve followed their advice (the tips are described in more detail on their website):

1. Define Your Purpose: I don’t think I’ve ever laid out a Mission Statement here, I just got down to it. There was a point after the election where I mused about transitioning from a campaign blog to something “more useful and informative for residents over the course of my term as councillor.” And my “Do You Get Many Calls” idea was explained as something to “provide the curious a sense of the types and volumes of contacts we get from constituents.” That’s about it. Grade: B
2. Personally Commit to Your Blog: This is about posting often, responding to comments, not letting the blog stagnate. I’m gonna say my responding to comments keeps me out of failure territory here. Grade: D+
3. It’s Your Blog- Do it Yourself: No ghost writers here. Grade: A+
4. Don’t Put It All Out There: Roughly defined as giving “insight on your thoughts, work and travels, without boring them with mundane stories and anecdotes”. Uh, boring you with mundane stories? Hmm. Grade: C+
5. You’ve Got To Be One Tough Cookie: I haven’t had to deal, personally, with any trolls, flamers, or otherwise unfriendly commenters here, so I can’t say. If, in the future, someone calls me names and I burst into tears I will fail myself on this one. Grade: Deferred
6. Study Those Blogs: I read a wide variety. Grade: A

That’s how I see it. Feel free to get out your red pen and play teacher. Fill out my report card and I’ll take it home to mommy. Seriously though, I hope this weblog gives people some small insight into my work as a councillor. It’s not always easy finding the time, and I think the “Don’t Put It All Out There” tip is well-considered, but if it helps answer a question, spark a conversation, or just mildly entertain you, I think it’s well worth the effort on my part.

No, this is not where I accept bribes from crooked developers and cook up deals with corporate lobbyists, but you may occasionally catch a glimpse of me squeezing out onto Queen Street at the far end of this alley.

Ever since the city sold its parking lot for the construction of the new Ceridian building, which is well underway, I’ve been using one of three or four remaining city-owned parking spots behind Island Optical. The quickest way to the front door of city hall from there (since I always forget my security card which would get me in the back door) is to shuffle sideways through this narrow alley. I’ve gotten a few strange looks from people who’ve seen me clambering out of this sketchy spot.

While managing some of the thousands of comment spams that bombard this website, I inadvertently deleted some legitimate comments that were made on some recent posts. The anti-spam routine that normally identifies and sequesters machine-generated comments (mostly ads for prescription drugs) allowed a few illegitimate comments through, and when I was deleting them I accidentally deleted some real reader comments and even a couple of my own. I was able to recover most — if not all — the ones I trashed, but I’m not sure I got them all. So, if you happen to notice a comment you made on this website has mysteriously disappeared, it was not intentional. I’m sorry, it won’t happen again.

On this same topic, I’ve been meaning to mention The Guardian, and specifically their comment policy. It was a great move when they started allowing readers to comment on stories online; it’s an excellent way to gauge the public’s reaction to an issue and engage readers. But something that has always bothered me is their seemingly random and vaguely defined criteria for deleting comments. The comments are not always insightful nor necessarily coherent, but it’s a guilty pleasure of mine to read through them (even if they are criticising me and my fellow councillors). Quite often you will notice a reference by one commenter to another comment that obviously no longer exists. Otherwise, when the Guardian moderators delete a comment there is no way to know, and no explanation is given. It would be helpful if when a comment is removed it does not simply disappear into a black hole, but rather gets replaced by an explanation, such as “Comment #14 removed for excessive profanity and potentially libelous statements”, or whatever. There’s something that makes me uneasy about The Guardian’s comments feature because you have no way of knowing how many comments are deemed inappropriate and deleted, or why.

You’re welcome to comment here with as much libelous profanity as you please… to a certain extent.

Recently I was declared by the city’s solicitor to be in a conflict of interest over a request for a variance on a property adjacent to mine. The property owner had — without a permit — built a large deck that did not comply with the minimum side and rear yard setbacks and was belatedly applying for a variance. Admittedly, I have a history with the property in question, having publicly opposed a development that took place there prior to me being elected to council. But many of my neighbours expected me to oppose the variance on their behalf.

During an orientation session at the beginning of my term, our solicitor gave us a very thorough presentation on the concept of conflicts of interest, and the various forms by which they can present themselves. On the deck variance, firstly, I was deemed to have a bias because of my past opposition to the whole development, and secondly, there was a concern that because of the proximity, the non-conforming deck may affect the value of my property and I should not stand in judgment of anything in which I may have a material interest. Fair enough. I recused myself from the discussion at Planning Board, and when it came to a vote in council I left the chamber (Planning Board’s recommendation was to deny the request, Council disagreed).

Now, I don’t intend to question the character of our provincial Minister of Transportation, and perhaps I’m not exactly comparing apples to apples, but I see some parallels in the situation he currently finds himself in. If I can assume that conflict of interest guidelines are generally universal, then Ron MacKinley can very reasonably be deemed to have a material interest in a set of traffic lights that directly abuts his large, as-yet undeveloped piece of land. And perhaps you could argue he had a bias in favor of the new intersection.

I’m not trying to score political points against Ron MacKinley, or anyone else, but in my situation with the variance, I felt hamstrung and was very disappointed that I could not represent the wishes of my neighbours who clearly opposed the variance (I also believe this variance, which was ultimately granted, sets a very bad precedent). MacKinley probably just thought he was doing his job.

There have been a number of conflicts declared by various councillors since I began my term, some more tenuous than others. Councillors are always disappointed when they cannot represent their constituents, but we accept the old maxim, “justice must not only be done, but seen to be done”. I was disappointed in my case, but happy to step back and remove the possibility of someone applying the “sniff test” after the fact. When the provincial Conflict of Interest Commissioner reports back to the legislature, Ron MacKinley may be wishing he’d stepped back as well.

Interesting sidenote: The same developer is involved in both cases; my deck variance issue, and MacKinley’s Cornwall intersection (and also the Winslow intersection issue, in today’s Guardian).

Now that upgrades to the “Peter Pan” intersection have been completed — and considering the fact that the Trans-Canada Highway officially bypasses Charlottetown altogether via the arterial highway — a public consultation was held today to rename the stretch of the old “Trans-Canada Highway” from the Maypoint/Upton road to the the new intersection at the end of University Ave. A small group of business owners, local residents, and other interested parties were in attendance.

Understandably, there is a lot of confusion caused by the current situation. Tourists are getting lost, mail is being delivered incorrectly to duplicate addresses, emergency services have responded to the wrong address, etc. An option to do nothing, i.e. do not rename the road, was quickly dismissed.

A long list of names that had been put forward in previous discussions on this topic was presented. Some names of longstanding area residents were removed from the list because no one was present to make a case for them. In the end, after much discussion, the list was narrowed down to four options; two “generic” names, and two names of individuals that were pitched by their children.

1. Colonel McCormack
2. Etta’s Way
3. Capital
4. University (West)

(a designation of road, avenue, drive, etc, is also to be determined)

A recommendation will be forwarded to council for our November 12th meeting. Business owners felt it was important to make a decision as soon as possible, as much of the tourism material for next year will be going to print within the next month or two and they did not want to suffer another season of their guests and customers being lead astray.

Without a doubt the most common question I get from people who are curious about my experiences on council is “Do you get many calls?”. The short answer is ‘not many’, but the volume of calls, emails, letters, and sidewalk conversations with residents about issues and general complaints is steadily increasing. The range of requests is also becoming more and more broad.

For a bit of fun, I’ve added a small “sideblog” in the right-hand sidebar of my main website where I will post a very brief description of the latest “call” I receive. These little asides will not contain any identifying information about the person who contacted me, but it should provide the curious a sense of the types and volumes of contacts we get from constituents. You can see a full list of these mini-posts by viewing the category archive for Calls, Emails, Complaints.

This is experimental for now, as I may not be able to keep up the pace and post about all the calls I receive.

I received an email today from a friend and resident of Ward 3 inquiring about public rights-of-way in his area. The neighbourhood chatter is that these rights-of-way are slowly being made completely inaccessible and thus diminishing the walkability of the neighbourhood.

The newer areas of Brighton, like many areas of the city, don’t appear to have been designed with pedestrian conerns in mind. There are many instances of two places that are very close together “as the crow flies”, but require you to walk a long circuitous path along streets and sidewalks to get from one to the other.

There are a few good examples of public footpaths that make the life of pedestrians easier in Ward 3 (particularly if you’re a student west of North River Rd). There are, however, a couple of examples — off the top of my head, and in my immediate vicinity — of rights-of-way being lost to new developments that have plunked themselves, literally, right in the walking publics’ path.

I’m in the process of making some inquiries to the city’s planning department and to our solicitor to try to find out how the city can defend these rights-of-way. What would it take to target some of these and put them into active use to make our neighbourhoods more walkable and family-friendly?

All municipal, all the time; that’s the slogan of MUNIBlogs, an aggregator of blogging municipal politicians from across Canada. They also have a “Related Blogs” section that features blogs of municipal “critics, pundits, allies and activists”. Seems like a good idea to me.

The site has only been up and running for a few weeks, and so far a councillor from Fredericton and I are holding up the fort east of Ontario. I’m sure that will change over time, as the site undergoes some fine tuning and new bloggers are discovered.

The Report of the City of Charlottetown Cosmetic Pesticide ad-hoc Committee [link to .PDF] is now officially public. Council voted unanimously to release the report at last night’s regular monthly meeting of council. As I’ve explained in countless emails and random conversations over the last three weeks — and as reiterated by several councillors last night — there was never any intention to do otherwise. You can download the document in its unredacted entirety using the link above.