There’s a horror movie trope about a community that’s perfect on the surface but hiding something terrible and disturbing underneath. Movies like The Stepford Wives and Get Out are warnings that the more people tell you something is great, the more likely there’s something rotten underneath.
I sometimes feel that Guelph is like that.
Richard Vivian’s article on GuelphToday.com this week – “'Token' input not enough for advisory committees, they want more” – brings together a variety of thoughts about what’s going on behind the scenes at public advisory committees. There’s a schism between those dedicated citizens, and the city staff members they deal with, and it’s starting to show in the public forum.
The most apparent of these scuffles was the recent decision about the Cultural Heritage Master Plan, and the divergent interests of the committee and staff with the finished document that prompted council to request mediation. At the time, many wondered if this was the exception, but these things only rarely occur in the singular.
Indeed, I’ve heard from members of a couple of different committees that they felt unheard, and that their concerns were dismissed or ignored while taking part.
More than that, the issues have been there in black and white for anyone to see. Posted minutes from the May 2019 meeting of the Downtown Advisory Committee includes the line, “council should be made aware of the dysfunction of DAC.”
“Dysfunction” is a particular word because it implies that something fundamental in the system isn’t working. It’s not like friction, because friction is brought to the table by the personalities and the emotions of the specific people involved, and dysfunction seems more like a more universal problem based in the system.
So we must ask ourselves, what is the point of these public advisory committees? Are they meant to receive and comment on staff work, or are they there to direct staff on issues they may not be aware of in the greater community?
Ideally, the answer is both, but it was clear from Richard’s article that many people feel that serving on a committee is mostly about the former and not so much about the latter.
Let’s be clear, people that feel driven to take part in these committees are passionate about the issues they deal with. They’re coming to these boards with ideas and concerns of their own, and they are eager to engage with staff more directly as a way to create real improvement.
This is where all the West Wing fantasies about community engagement come to end because they’re walking into a committee that’s probably in the middle of other matters, while the issues they want to deal with fall further and further down the to do list. Considering that committees only meet about once a month, how long until people start feeling frustrated with the process?
I also know that some people have pie-in-the-sky ideas about the powers of municipal government, and maybe staff throws cold water on those hopes because there’s no time, no budget, or no feasible way to make a project come true. Cities also have to balance the demands of upper levels of government who sometimes insist that work be completed on their schedule, and thus damning all local considerations.
Perhaps the problem is that there’s not a lot of room in our formal political structures to talk openly about issues without the constrictions of working off a task list.
I’ve tried to sell the idea for years that there should be a monthly council meeting that’s an open forum. Whether its concerns about traffic policy or using the Guelph Junction Railway for a sightseeing train, council should make time to hear from citizens on whatever they like on that extra Monday every month.
But this might never come to pass because it would belie the appearance of Guelph as a cool place with cool people doing cool things. It’s a PR campaign that sells Guelph as a place to entertain and enjoy, but not necessarily as a place to live because anyone that’s lived in the same house as other human beings knows that living with other people is often messy.
There’s a reason why they say you don’t want to watch the sausage get made, and that’s because it’s gross. If the intention is to grow and change though, we need to get used to the grossness because change is rarely easy, or accepted universally.
Before signing off, I would like to address last week’s column.
First, a correction. The “Johnston” of Johnston Hall was named after William Johnston, the founder and first principal of the Ontario Agricultural College, and not Edward Johnson, opera singer. Sorry about that.
Second, many of you commented on the original post or personally wrote to me about how Margaret Greene Park is named after the woman that donated the land that bears her name, and how she lived in a farmhouse off Paisley Road near the Hanlon. Now I know, and now you know, and that remains the core point of the entire endeavour.
Let’s get a committee together to we can update the city’s website appropriately!
