Messy systems need fixing

Like that nasty little problem of raw sewage flowing into the Thames, it's well past time the city got around to correcting the way it governs itself.
GEORGE SINCLAIR, Special to The Free Press 2005-06-10 01:42:20

On Monday, London city council will be asked to consider a petition that board of control be eliminated, that council be reduced in size and that new ward boundaries be drawn.

Last March, a Ministry of the Environment report indicated that, almost every time it rains, millions of litres of untreated waste water are dumped directly into the Thames River.

These two issues, so different at first glance, are actually closely related. Here's why.

The Environment Ministry reported on a series of inspections it made at London's sewage treatment plants over a period of many months. The findings were presented to the city's advisory committee on the environment. During the period covered in the report, about 1.8 billion litres of untreated water was released into the Thames -- from the Greenway plant alone.

The fact this happens -- and the reason it happens -- are well known, at least among the folks at city hall. But don't look for it in the glossy tourist brochures or on the city website.

It happens mainly because, in older parts of the city, the storm sewers and sanitary sewers share the same pipes. When it rains, the flow increases big time and quickly exceeds the capacity of the system to handle it.

The floodgates are opened and straight down the Thames it goes -- past Delaware and Muncey, Thamesville and Chatham and right into the lower Great Lakes.

That kind of takes the fun out of complaining about Toronto garbage trucks zooming past our front door, doesn't it? It is similarly hard to occupy the moral high ground regarding the filthy air blowing up the Ohio Valley from coal-fired generators.

What is ironic about the ministry report is that the "overflows" and "bypasses" themselves don't seem to be the problem. The problem was the fact the city was not sampling, analysing or reporting them on a timely basis, as required by the province.

The fact that we dump our poo directly into the river isn't the issue -- it is rather that the paperwork is not done on time.

I don't know about you, but I'm less interested in the reporting requirements, and more interested in the number and volume of the releases detailed in the report. But maybe that's just me.

This situation is not a new one. It has been allowed to go on year after year, decade after decade and council after council.

We (as a city) have neglected to deal responsibly with that most basic need of its inhabitants -- sewage treatment.

So where has city council been all this time? What have council members been working on? What have their priorities been?

You don't have to look too far to see them.

A recent Free Press article described a lack of sewage treatment capacity in London, and how new development was starting to bump into the limits of the existing sewage treatment system.

There is renewed talk about spending upwards of $100 million to build a new sewage treatment plant (Southside) to deal with the orgy of new construction going on around the edges of the city.

Let's be clear. The proposed Southside sewage treatment plant will do nothing to address deficiencies with the existing system. Rather, it will probably ensure that these won't ever be dealt with, as scarce tax dollars are continually applied to service new developments, rather than fix existing problems.

And it's not just deficiencies with the sewage system. Anyone who's tried biking up Richmond Street or down Ridout Street could be forgiven for supposing they had been recently land-mined and not completely put back together again. And don't even get me started on the subject of trees.

The basic needs of Londoners are not being met, but we're adding new costs daily, with every mile of new road being paved around the city's edges.

We are building a city we cannot afford to look after properly.

Now back to city hall reform.

When I was learning about governments and politics, it was said that the constitution of the former Soviet Union was the most perfect constitution ever written. I don't know whether that was true or not, but what I do know is that the resulting Soviet system was, for the better part of a century, a dismal and blood-soaked failure.

It should be obvious that structure, however well conceived, is no guarantor of good results for the simple reason that structure does not decide and structure does not vote. Politicians decide and politicians vote.

What is perhaps less obvious is how structure influences those decisions, albeit indirectly. Structure can ensure that a particular kind of candidate is more likely to succeed at raising money, running and winning a spot among the decision makers.

So the question is: Can we imagine a different structure, one that increases the odds that good candidates can run for city council and succeed, and that their success will have less to do with who they know and more to do with what they know?

Happily, we believe, the answer is yes -- we can make improvements to the way things work.

The Imagine London petition that has been making the rounds lately requests changes to the structure of council that, we believe, will result in better decisions and better government for all.

Creating 14 smaller wards would satisfy city voters' expressed desire for reducing the size of local government, while increasing the amount and effectiveness of local representation.

More wards mean smaller workloads for councillors, improved access to councillors and a more even playing field at voting time. Having single councillors per ward ensures a high degree of accountability.

Strong ward councillors will be more readily discernible -- and less effective ones shown up as such.

The other half of Imagine London's proposal -- that board of control be eliminated -- would reduce the influence of big money at the time that priorities are set and decisions are made.

While London's board of control may appear an effective way to deal with complex issues, in practice this has not translated into stronger or better governance -- certainly nothing so obviously superior to other municipalities that would justify its continued existence.

To become a controller takes money -- lots of money. Our review of election expenses reveals that donations often come from contractors, landlords, builders, lawyers, consultants and others who have issues that regularly come before council.

Eliminate board of control and part of that problem goes away, and perhaps other, more mundane issues, come into focus -- such as ensuring that the trip between our toilets and the Canadian Heritage River at our doorstep is not an express one.

Is there a relationship between city council structure and the sorts of priorities and decisions that they make? We think so.

Changing the structure of London city council is simply one way to help ensure better decisions emerge from the vast and complicated process of local government.





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