Wheelchair Transportation Service

...receives funding to do study. First, a preamble: Let's say a lawyer was accused of fraud. Then that lawyer says "Okay, I'll investigate it. Myself. And get back to you with the results". What would you think? being reasonable, and rational people.?
Not that this first has anything to do with the following, but: Given the fact that the president of Transport de Clare said to me that He *wants* Digby Neck and Islands. He WANTS Bear River. and He WANTS Digby, I find it "funny" that he has been given major amounts of money to do a study to determine a need for his own service. What do you think would be the results?
This from Marilla Stephenson of the Chronicle Herald:
"The provincial Liberals are heading down a dangerous road in making noises about munici­pal funding they could find hard to deliver on if they eventually form the government...

The changes will leave mu­nicipalities with $50 million in costs, at a time when the impact of an assessment cap program, combined with stagnant proper­ty assessments, is starting to hit home.

Throw in the provincial deci­sions to spend money to prop up red-ink businesses in the Strait and industrial Cape Breton re­gions, compared to its firm No to support a Yarmouth ferry service to the United States, and the discourse turns even more sour from one end of the prov­ince to the other.

Geoff MacLellan, the Liberals’ economic development critic in the legislature, waded into the deep waters on Friday, calling for a review of the province’s municipal equalization program that “needs to be “independent." “If the province handles the review internally, there will always be doubt about its accu­racy and objectivity," the Glace Bay MLA said in a Friday re­lease."

From Bob Howse of the Chronicle Herald: How can we do a better job of governing ourselves at the community level?

That’s a question we think Nova Scotians should ask in the wake of some serious and costly failures in grassroots government in this province.

So today we begin a yearlong series, How Are We Governed? We hope it will kick off a provincewide debate leading up to next October’s municipal elections.

We’ll look at what Nova Scotians want from local government and how to ensure that elected and appointed officials have the training and expertise to do the job competently and responsibly.

We’ll take on the issue of redefining communities when old borders and local rivalries don’t reflect the way citizens live, work and access services today.

We’ll examine models of efficient and cost-effective service delivery and how to pay for them. We’ll consider how to make these organizations more open, responsive and accountable to the public.

And we’ll delve into the aspects of community governance that matter to you.

So please join in. Let us know how you’d like your community to work.

The recent failures are many.

The South Shore regional school board is the third dysfunctional school board in five years to be fired and replaced by a provincial administrator.

The South West Shore Development Authority went bankrupt after audits uncovered poor oversight and financial controls. It leaves a legacy of bad debts, unpaid bills and lost assets that can only be called economic de-development.

The Town of Bridgetown is under provincial administration because a misappropriation of funds and chaotic accounting were beyond its means to investigate and fix.

Halifax Regional Municipality often tries to operate in secrecy, while abusing the public trust through ill-advised concert promotions.

The Utility and Review Board is hearing a proposal to merge another small town, Canso, into the Municipality of the District of Guysborough. Canso clearly can’t afford to be independent. But does merging a town of 900 residents with a municipality of 5,000 go far enough to create a viable unit when both are rapidly losing population?

The six municipal units that govern Pictou County’s 46,000 people have just failed to agree on cost-sharing a study into the financial impact of a merger.

Nothing new here. In 1969, the same units couldn’t agree to fund a similar study. When four did commission the research, it strongly recommended a merger.

Pictou County exemplifies our basic problem with local government. We are mired in the tyranny of small differences. We seem stuck.

Most of our municipal units are still defined by boundaries that Colonial Office officials drew up with quill pens two centuries ago.

Their reasons haven’t always aged well. Hants County was severed from Kings County because crossing the Avon River was inconvenient. Not exactly a burning issue today.

Since the 1940s, various studies have told us the existing divisions don’t work. Their populations and tax bases are too small to pay for the services people want. They prevent us from taking a broader community approach to planning and services. They keep us from pooling scarce resources to deliver those services more efficiently and at lower tax burdens.

In 1941, the minimum size for new towns was set at 1,500 people. We still have 10 older towns that don’t meet this test of viability.

In 1949, the Rowat Report recommended nine regional municipalities with minimum populations of 40,000. Nothing happened. In 1973, the Graham Royal Commission proposed three metropolitan governments (Halifax, Cape Breton and Pictou) and eight strong counties that combined urban and rural areas.

With the exception of creating the Cape Breton, Halifax and Queens regional municipalities in the 1990s, we’ve been steadfast in ignoring this advice. As historian Murray Beck wrote for the Graham Royal Commission, the principal lesson of our history of municipal government “is that the basic units are highly impervious to change.”

Our demographics, however, are changing. Outside Halifax, only three counties (Kings, Hants and Colchester) showed population growth in the 2006 census. Only a handful of towns had significant growth. Eventually, demographics will prevail and we’ll have to redesign community-level government to fit these population changes.

We think it makes sense to get ahead of this change and to reorganize ourselves into strong communities with the right service organizations and governance practices to provide quality service, reasonable taxes and accountability.

Marilla Stephenson and Dan Leger will have more to say on this subject Sunday and Monday respectively. Our series of news articles begins Monday.

Our province needs to modernize. Let’s figure out how to do it."

So, is bringing in a transportation service to Digby area a good thing to do? Or a farce? For people who only think as far as their wallet and if something's cheaper than something else is their only consideration, they'd think it a good thing. Not deep thinking, but they'd see it as a good thing.
BUT here we have the same service, which has pushed and pushed to expand its empire, towing around municipal politicians like a motorboat towing water-skiers. Not a bad analogy. So when talks about transportation comes up, he jams himself into Bear River to forestall anyone else doing it. And he sits there. His vehicle sits there. Every week. I'm sure he got big bucks (he received thousands of our health dollars) to sit there. And his vehicle does. But he won't go out there and drive that vehicle or have someone else drive it, NO. HE won't go for one person. They say he won't even go for two people. He fields the calls, no doubt, and no doubt he has received money to provide the service, but has he done more than one or two trips? Even the town's business anchor said to me: "No, it doesn't seem as if his service is too popular. We don't know why." So he sits. And yet was paid out of our scarce public dollars, yours and mine, to sit.
Now he's in Digby, too. Or at least his vehicle is. What I had heard was that he would do some stuff maybe out in Conway, but would use taxis to do the downtown stuff. Something about regulations, I think. However yesterday I saw the vehicle picking up and dropping off in the downtown core. Maybe had one passenger. Couldn't see more, but was hard to see. Everyone *wants*. Oh yes, give us this, give us that. Sure we want more services. But, when they've got it, they don't use it.
So how much much of our taxpayer money is going toward this? How much was he given to sit in Bear River, and what happens to that money? ...if the vehicle isn't or rarely is used in the service the money was given for? Is there transparency about this? Or accountability for our money?
Now he is doing a study that would bring him being given MORE money. Is this a legitimate process? Would the results of a study done by an entity that would stand to gain financially from construed "positive" results be legitimate? Back to the lawyer investigating himself.
If this abuse of your money isn't occurring, I would like to see the accredited professional Halifax firm that is doing or has done this study. If such a firm hasn't been used, just how objective would the study be? How meaningful as a statement of facts, would it be?
Would you call this a cost effective service for your money being spent to have a vehicle sit and go nowhere, while you don't know where exactly that money is going if it's not being used to provide service?

My say, Blogger