The Oppenheimer Report -3/23/15

My rant du jour is about our wasted tax dollars. Several months ago, and largely through the efforts of a citizen of Huntsville and our community radio station, we learned of plans to cut back services at the Huntsville Hospital. The first cut they are proposing is to the surgical services, followed by the emergency room, and who knows what’s next. There is the very real possibility that eventually, the Town of Huntsville will no longer have a hospital, and people from here and points north and east will have to travel an even longer distance to receive health care. For elders living in remote locations, this becomes particularly troublesome. Of course, had there not been some squeaky wheels in the community, all of this would have been done out of the public eye. I understand the Ontario government even hired a consultant to explain why this is necessary, a kneejerk reaction to the negative reaction of the locals. I wonder what that consultant is being paid. Somehow, there was funding for a multi-million dollar sports complex and summit center,  why aren’t there sufficient funds allocated for a hospital that services the health care needs of over 2500 square miles of full time residents, not to mention the huge influx of seasonal residents?  I’m told the problem is in how the Province of Ontario allocates hospital funding, but whatever are the political and economic factors causing this to happen, the whole thing makes me bristle. It seems sometimes governments have their priorities wrong. Why is it we the private sector are obliged, sometimes mandated by law, to act in a financially responsible way, but governments are notorious for mismanaging funds? Who is it, for instance, who decided to build that Ontario power plant and then scrapped the project, at a cost of $500 Million?

It all reminds me of my dealings with the Town of Fort Erie, across the border from Buffalo, and a municipality in which I used to reside during the summer months. It is also a Township that had what I consider to be ridiculously high real estate taxes for the services rendered.  I am very thankful to no longer own real estate in Ft. Erie, because the guys who run that town are not particularly good with money. For years, owners of waterfront property just west of Ft. Erie were largely summer residents from Buffalo and Western New York. The town had for decades tried unsuccessfully to wrest control of the privately owned beaches, claiming that making these beaches public was in the public interest. The town fought unsuccessfully to expropriate this land, but for years the private residents fought back, and finally won. Never underestimate the machinations of a town government. Then, as a sort of spiteful end run, the town fathers decided that, to raise the tax base, it would be a good idea to pass legislation essentially setting aside deed restrictions which prohibit the subdivision of waterfront lots for development. Needless to say, this decision was controversial and had a serious potential to impact on property owners in the area. It should have been made with adequate public notice to property owners affected by the proposed changes, but it was not. Required public notice was made a little over two weeks before Christmas, and the meeting to pass the proposal was snuck in before the holiday, essentially assuring that dissenting interests would not have a chance to present a successful opposition. Most of the affected property owners were not even aware of the change until after it had taken place. This is one of many reasons I don’t have any love lost for the Town of Ft. Erie. They are in my opinion sneaky bastards. In recent years, there has been a controversial effort to develop a high rise complex on the site of the former Crystal Beach Amusement Park, which would substantially increase the population density of the area. This may or may not have been a good thing for the community. What was decidedly not a good thing for the community was the fact that a Ft. Erie councilor had a substantial financial interest in this development, representing an atrocious conflict of interest. While the project is now on hold, I doubt it has much to do with the rights of the property owners.

So I went to the hospital rally, and I listened to all the well-reasoned arguments for not cutting back on Huntsville’s hospital services. The turnout was good, and reams of petitions have been signed to let the Ontario Minister of Health know how adamantly we are all oppose to this. Nevertheless, I think this is a bit like Sisyphus pushing a rock uphill. We are not going to solve the provincial funding problem anytime soon, and essential services will suffer. That money allocated to this hospital has already been spent, on Pamela Wallin’s private travel expenses, on Stephen Harper’s war chest, and on an Ontario power plant that never got built. The time has come for me to take matters into my own hands. I’m thinking of auctioning off a kidney.

 

Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c2015 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED