Report card takes narrow view of what council does
The problem with a new Peterborough Ratepayers’ Association report card on city council is not that it’s partisan, but that it is too narrow and simplistic to be taken seriously.
A review based on how council members voted on just two issues over a two-year period, their response rate to email questions from association members and attendance barely scratches the performance surface.
That said, the group clearly does have a conservative bias, both small “c” and big “C.”
The choice of those two votes is clear evidence of small “c” fiscal prudence that is a conservative hallmark.
One was to give council a pay raise, the other to hold the current year’s property tax increase to 0.5 per cent.
Council members who voted “wrong” on both got not just failing grades, but miserable ones. F for Mayor Dianne Therrien — numerically, a dismal 21 per cent, which was better than Coun. Keith Riel at 17 per cent and Coun. Kemi Akapo at 10 per cent.
Up in the stratosphere were three councillors who opposed a raise and a well-researched budget report that called for a reasonable 2.5 per cent tax increase — Andrew Beamer, Lesley Parnell and Henry Clarke at 96, 95 and 94 per cent respectively.
They were the only councillors to score better than D+, establishing a talent divide so wide it could exist only in the minds of those with an axe to grind.
The partisan angle is not surprising.
Association president Jeff Westlake (formerly constituency assistant to Conservative MP Dean Del Mastro and most recently campaign manager for Conservative MPP Dave Smith) made the point that other groups that lobby council also come from a political angle, most often from the left.
He’s right. The local environmental lobby is dominated by Liberal and NDP supporters. So were groups aligned against The Parkway and construction of a casino in the city. One group even ranked councillors on “green” issues in a 2016 report card.
It might be possible for a partisan group — in addition to Westlake, three of the association’s seven directors are active in the local Conservative or Progressive Conservative parties — to produce an evenhanded review of council performance, but this isn’t it.
Beyond the fact that two years of service is boiled down to two issues, email response time and fairly uniform attendance records, summary comments in the report card demonstrate a notably subjective animosity toward some councillors despite those supposedly “objective” metrics.
Coun. Dean Pappas, for example, got an “F” despite voting for lower property taxes, a result completely inconsistent with the rest of the scorecard. Perhaps because he “triggered” a review of council salaries and voted for an increase.
Two “failing” councillors are called out for supporting a bylaw that would have allowed homeowners to keep backyard chickens, surely one of the least weighty of all the votes this council has held.
Kim Zippel (F) is noted as the mayor’s representative on an environmental committee, as well as a chicken supporter. Her occupation is listed as “retired,” ignoring the successful construction management business she and her husband founded and run.
We could go on.
The Ratepayer’s Association is free to rank council performance and focus on issues it considers important, but until it does a better job of both its report cards also get a failing grade.