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At the end of my Aug. 7 open deputation to Tiny Township council — virtually identical to the open letter to council published in these pages — I thanked council kindly for its consideration.
My expression of gratitude dovetailed with the conciliatory spirit of the letter/deputation, the first line of which was, “Please accept this as an appeal to your conscience of reason as well as your love of democracy.”
It turns out that my gestures of gratitude and conciliation towards council were entirely misplaced. At council’s Aug. 7 committee of the whole meeting, Coun. Dave Brunelle, referring to a June 26 deputation, proposed a motion for holding a referendum on whether to proceed with the new build project or adopt less costly but feasible alternatives. Yet none of the other four councillors seconded the motion. Because of which, it was given no “consideration” whatsoever. They simply slammed the door shut on it, therewith making starkly evident their total disrespect for Coun. Brunelle and the many other citizens who share his well-founded skepticism about the wisdom of council’s new town hall project.
Mayor Dave Evans recently asserted that council has the backing of a “silent majority.” The Stop the Build group has repeatedly asked to see all the evidence council possesses for this assertion, but to no avail.
Meanwhile, the petitions, deputations, rallies, and numerous other actions in past months strongly suggest the large and quickly growing number of Tiny residents openly expressing their grave doubts about the project are, or at least will soon become, a majority.
Mayor Evans has also insisted there is no need to further “rehash” the issue, because it had been sufficiently debated and the Tiny public had been adequately informed along the way about the need for a new administrative centre.
I beg to differ. Owing to its sheer magnitude — and potentially disastrous consequences — the new build ought to have been thoroughly vetted in the public domain beforehand. Yet this issue (unlike such bread-and-butter concerns as short-term rentals, beach access and spaces, and road repair) never saw anything remotely resembling close public scrutiny, either before or after the 2022 municipal election.
Instead council has contented itself with merely posting, in obscure places on its website, various reports, some very long and technical, and minutes of meetings pertaining to the project, and then later holding “public engagement sessions” where residents would be confined to providing “input into the features they would like to see” in the new building.
So, when they found out about this new building project following the 2022 election, apparently the vast majority of these Tiny residents were flummoxed. It was like ordering something from Amazon, but then upon delivery discovering that what was inside the package wasn’t what you had ordered.
Yet all is not lost. Council can still reverse its unwise decision and vote in favour of a referendum. Let’s hope the four members of council who opposed Coun. Brunelle’s motion last week eventually come to their senses and join him in doing what is both reasonable and highly democratic.
Borys Kowalsky
Tiny Township
