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Merlin loses his magic! Way down the highway from Cobourg lies the sleepy hollow of Northumberland County - the Township of Cramahe. This municipality is the result of a forced marriage between the village of Colborne and the Township of Cramahe. The homes of the epitome of atypical rural politicians; these two sleepy municipalities just keep on ticking and the citizens take a licking. The ruling style for years for both of the former municipalities was one of constant micro-management by the elected politicians. The politicians also had a style of infighting amongst themselves and a deep distrust of each other, and Councils have usually been a a rats nest of intrigue worthy of Machiavelli. Thus it was a surprise to pundits alike when, during the wave of amalgamations in the late 90s, the two municipalities decided to merge. But although they merged the ruling style became worse. In 1999 Reeve Jim Williams won over Stu Oliver, a veteran of rural politics of the local style. In 2002 Jim Williams lost to Lee Dekeyser, a man who never saw an elector that he didn't have to shake hands with. Stu Oliver lost in the Deputy Mayor's race to Mike Johnston in a battle of blowhard over boredom.

Straddling both the merging of the Townships and the race into the future came a new CAO - Merlin Dewing. Apparently a nice guy but determined to drag the municipality into the 21st century he tried to work his magic with professional reports and bold hiring and firing recommendations. If you cutaway to an historical connection and make analogies then the following text is apocryphal. Just substitute Arthur for Lee and Nimue for commonsense you can see that Merlin Dewing had no chance, his future had been chronicled centuries ago,

Of course Merlin probably didn't do himself much good when in one of his early Council meetings he decided to lecture the rural rubes that comprised the Council of the day how a good Council meeting should proceed! But back to the subject of the article which is to understand why Merlin lost his head. So the dynamic of the Council of the day was one of the future being beaten down by the meddling councillors of the past.

To add intrigue to the mix of hyper micro managing of township affairs you have to add the emergence of an active ratepayers group, discussion of how to divide the municipal spoils of the Keeler Centre and the establishment of a municipal housing development and the constant whining about a previous tax increase that had been imposed to build the Keeler Centre and the disposition of the old arena (which some people believed never had to be replaced) and the death of the newly elected Deputy Mayor. As a central figure in all of these issues, except the death of the DM, Merlin obviously failed to cultivate friends and possibly believed that his actions would show the true way.

Township buzz has it that Merlin certainly didn't win any friends but gained the obvious enmity of a junior councilor (Marc Coombs) when by filling the vacant DM's job he advised that a councilor could be appointed to the job. This was strange in itself because the election was still recent when Mike dropped dead. Two choices were available when deciding to fill the vacancy: Council could appoint someone to the job or they could have another election. In choosing someone to fill the spot one had to consider the candidate that lost to the dead guy in the recent election - Stu Oliver. For reasons not specified Council decided to appoint a councilor to the job and blow off Stu. But who to appoint? Four people had to choose and one, the CAO, had to advise. It was no secret that Marc Coombs had staked out the position of Deputy Mayor, but unfortunately the man had obviously failed to convince his colleagues of his talents to be the DM. Ray Kelly was appointed! Marc was livid and sources tell me he blamed Merlin for the circumstance. It is a public record that since that time Marc Coombs has questioned every report that Merlin produced: the water tower, the cost of the sewer line to the industrial park, and the rec management plan all were not to Marc's liking. But that is background.

The story goes like this and has yet to be confirmed by anybody who can
Over the Labour Day weekend a coup d'etat happened. Stories vary but some time in the early part of the weekend secret meetings took place. These meetings took place in the absence of the Mayor and even included disgruntled former Township employees and town's solicitor. Three councillors: Kelly, Coombs and Van Egmond refused to attend a meeting convened by Mayor Dekeyser, who had heard of the secret meetings. They instead called the Mayor and the other councilor Tim Post, and told them to meet at the municipal office on Sunday afternoon, with the solicitor in tow. It is said that Coombs made a motion to terminate Merlin's contract immediately, which was promptly seconded by Kelly, and the three musketeers [should be knights of the Round Table - maintain historical consistency, ed] won the day. Merlin was out of the place before sundown. Just remember that only the participants know what really happened because personnel matters are held in secret, but we can speculate. If these tales are true then just what is in store for Cramahe now when the tail is now wagging the dog?

Unfortunately the dynamic of a ratepayers group bellyaching about an extravagant Council and a Council saying that they are so misunderstood by the electorate that they have to spend $6,300.00 on town hall meetings to get back the respect that they say ratepayers don't have for them anymore, is that the action of firing Merlin is going to cost them big time. The contract that Merlin had still had 18 months left and now he has grounds to sue for damages to his reputation for being fired, something he has experience in doing. Do I hear big Toronto lawyers' feet in the distance?

Stay tuned

So what is the big issue in Cobourg this year?
We will find out soon, I suspect that the simmering issue of recent tax increases will erupt during a public meeting to discuss the innocuous subject of Sewer and Waterworks funding. The Provincial government has mandated that all municipalities must pass bylaws that restructure the public financing of Sewage and Water - "life-cycle cost accounting" In other words a rate of taxation has to be devised that would pay for the construction/installation, operation and closure of sewage and water facilities. That sum of money is then applied to the rates over the life of the facility.

Cobourg in its wisdom commissioned a consultant to come up with the financial impact of complying with the Provincial mandate. A draft report went to Council a couple of weeks ago and they have set up a public meeting for September 27^th. The report has been made available to the public and a couple of things should be noted:

If the public is going to be invited to study the reports the type of reports that Council has deemed acceptable to them is not acceptable to the public. The type of report that Council has accepted is that of "Powerpoint Presentation" slides just put on paper. As a reader who comes in after the 'bells and whistles' presentation these notes make no sense if the report has to be read by someone who was not at the meeting. We need at least an executive summary and conclusion page.
The content of the report is hard to read because there are no explanatory notes thus the public is uninformed by the report. This makes it hard for Town staff not to be bothered by members of the public wanting information so that they can ask intelligent questions. In this case, one of a huge impact on our taxes, reports need to be easily read and understood to avoid the spectacle of members of the public asking unnecessary questions at the public meeting instead of debating the issues.
This report cannot be taken in isolation, a chart showing the future estimated tax increases must accompany this report, also the capacity of the sewage treatment plants should be stated. We can control the life of our plants by adjusting impacts on capacity - build fewer houses for example to extend the life of the plant!
A further explanation of the planned debentures and the Town's capacity to pay those debentures should be included and the big one - if future growth is to be funded by development how about increasing development charges drastically!

The bottom line for me is that if we are going to run out of sewage capacity in six years because we insist on allowing houses to be built at the historic level then why are we doing this? Increased growth is unsustainable and a burden on existing taxpayers. The benefits of growth, if there are any, are outweighed by the cost of allowing growth.