Looking for $ in all the wrong places

As I mentioned last issue, County Council needs to find ways to save BIG money. And, rule-bound by the province, and duty-bound by the taxpayers, they are lifting every little rock and stone to see if excess money is hiding there.
So they start with town halls, libraries and museums in the hope, perhaps, that they will find out that Bill Gates is the librarian in Consecon, and they have been accidentally paying him $4 billion per year.
This reminds me of an old Abbott and Costello routine: Lou is studying the ground under a streetlight, and Bud walks up and says, “What are you doing?”
“I lost my watch.”
Bud says, “Did you lose it here?”
“No, I lost it down the street.”
Bud asks, “Why are you looking here?”
Lou says, “Because the light is better.”
This, I think is what Council is doing. With literally millions of dollars stacking up in large scale jobs booked into their Budget for the coming year, they’re looking to save a few dimes on dump staff, librarians, curators and janitors.
This is like walking into a restaurant with an elephant and a mouse, and saying, “I’d like to order one lobster plate, five tons of hay, and a teeny-bit of cheese, because I’m watching my budget.”

I do understand that ‘user fees’ might help ease the burden. An extra dollar for garbage tags, an extra quarter for Picton parking. These little things add up quickly, until you have enough money to pay for part of one councillor’s recently-acquired pay raise. (I don’t begrudge them the raise, but they’ve got a lot to learn about ‘timing’!)
There’s always lots of talk about infrastructure, and this usually means roads and bridges and buildings. If you don’t build them, and maintain them, you will die as a community. And this costs a lot of money.
But there’s also a different kind of infrastructure. And that’s the network of people who choose to live in Prince Edward County. Unlike road repairs, you don’t just pay a big invoice to a contractor and, “Viola!” the problem goes away.
No, you build the infrastructure of a community by supporting local culture, by protecting heritage, and by maintaining places where people can gather to talk, and learn, listen to music, become enlightened by new thoughts from guest speakers, connect to Wi-Fi, read and explore.

This is a mandate that is far more important than money. And you know where you can find it? In libraries, town halls, museums and, yes, even at the dump (which, not surprisingly, is where I field most of my column ideas).
All of these are natural gathering places, and the County is enriched by their presence.
Sure, Council is exploring moving this library, or closing that museum, to save a few dollars. I question: “Where is the cost-savings?”
I hear through the grapevine that one item of discussion is moving Bloomfield Library to the basement of the Town Hall. Where is the cost-savings?

First, I’m sure the mortgage on this tiny, quaint building has been long paid off, so there’s no obvious money saved here. Maybe in taxes, but that goes back to Council. Perhaps they bill out $1,500 per year and then eagerly open the envelope and go, “Yay! We paid ourselves!”
Second: You can’t tell me that the move will cost under $20,000, what with teams of County employees loading boxes of books, moving or storing them, disassembling and reassembling the racks, and learning the Dewey Decimal system so they can put them back in the right order.
I’m sure a Book Engineer will need to be on-site, and possibly a consultant specializing in book-moving. Volunteers will not be allowed to help, because of the liability issues with ‘paper cuts’.
Third: So what do we do with the vacant building? Just ask some local real estate agents how ‘hot’ the market is now. “Here’s a good idea! Let’s list this for sale during the worst economic downturn in 20 years!”
I’ve taken the liberty of drafting the ‘For Sale’ ad: “Terrific deal! One room house for sale, suitable for people who only own a couch and a microwave. No bath/no kitchen/no bedroom. Lousy view. Smells like old paper. Must be seen! Owner must sell/doesn’t care anymore.”
Do you want to know the weird part? Of course you do.

The County did this to themselves. Not this Council, but back when money was flowing like County Wine.
In the 1970s, museums were all little places run by local curators with lots of heart, who volunteered countless hours to keep their museums alive.
Carolyn Love at Rose House, Marion Casson at Ameliasburgh, Dave Cole at Mariners, Don MacDermaid at Macaulay House, Ruth Armstrong in Wellington. These people wove their souls into the museums we love today.
But even before amalgamation, the writing was on the wall. The museums were restructured, and all answerable to the main museum in Picton.
Suddenly, people needed degrees to be curators, and all of the signage was standardized into white Helvetica on a black background, just like the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, except without the underground parking.
Needless to say, all of the ‘heart and soul’ people were unceremoniously dumped, and replaced with people who, oddly enough, put their own hearts and souls into their respective sites.
But still, everything was now run from Picton, with lots of complaints from the outlying curators about being ‘short-changed’ on both funding and promotion by ‘Holy Picton’.
This has since settled down, but I hope you see the analogy I’m building here.
What happened to the museums also happened to the townships, when amalgamation reared its dragon head.
What we value most becomes less and less valuable as time goes on.
Now ‘value’ is equated to ‘money’. And that is so not the case.
And the Council of the time bought itself into a situation where they wanted – and took – complete control. They wanted the town halls, which were already largely handled by volunteers, and funded by groups like the Women’s Institute. They wanted – and took – the museums, and built them into a much more costly system, but with really nice lettering.
Sadly, the current council must deal with the effects of the Thirst for Power inherited from their somewhat richer predecessors.
But they shouldn’t look in the easy places, where the streetlight is brighter. The real cost savings are buried in the Big Projects … but they’re a little harder to find.
Let’s hope they don’t wear out before they can track down the places where thousands of dollars are uselessly spent. And the nickels and dimes will probably take care of themselves.