Turf Fields - A tale of two cities

Here is a story of two turf fields in neighbouring towns.  The first turf field, located at St. Maximilian Kolbe High School, is a partnership between the Town of Aurora and the York Region Catholic School Board.  The second turf field, not yet built, will be a joint venture with the Town of Newmarket and the York Public School Board.  That field is slated for Dr. J.M. Denison High School.  Both fields cost $2,000,000 and both would generate revenues of approximately $10,000 annually.  Both fields cost the municipality approximately $1,000,000 towards the cost of construction.

The Aurora turf field was constructed in 2010 and the agreement between the Town of Aurora and the Catholic school board has been termed a partnership.  

By comparison, the Era is reporting that the agreement between the Town of Newmarket and the Public school board has hit a 'snag'.  The Town wants the Board to cover 66% of the maintenance cost of the field.  The Board feels the Town should cover the entire cost because the Board is providing the land for the field and the Town is benefiting from value of the land and the parking lot (which the Board maintains at 100% of the cost).  

Of note, the Public Board has similar agreements in place throughout York Region and it is typical for the municipality to cover the maintenance costs.  

At the Aurora field, it is reported that the Town of Aurora pays approximately $5,000 towards maintenance and $8,000 for lighting according to a 2010 article in the Era. 

This week's Era story on the Denison field suggests that the annual maintenance cost of a turf field would be in the range of $60,000 annually.  

The Town of Newmarket has a pricing policy that requires a 60/40 split on recovering costs.  What this means is that 60% of the cost of operating a facility is recovered by the users and 40% is subsidized by the public.  

If a turf field has a 20 year life span (and I think that is generous), then the amount of money that the Town must collect in user fees to recover the construction cost should be $30,000 plus an additional $36,000 to cover expected annual maintenance.  (These figures are 60% of the total).  

But the Town is only expecting to collect $10,000 annually.  This leaves the public subsidizing this field to the tune of 81% of the total costs versus 19% of the cost borne by the users.  

Before voting  to approve this expense, Council needs to explain why it has deviated so greatly from the fees it charges to other user groups.  Why is Newmarket Hockey paying its fair share of the cost of ice time, but user groups for this turf field are making off with a heavily subsidized rate?  

Reason dictates that we should oppose a publicly elected York Region Chair

There are a lot of arguments in support of "democracy" to elect the York Region Chair to replace the current system of election by the 21 members of Regional Council.

Personally, I think there are much bigger fish to fry in York.  Electing the Chair doesn't rank in my top 100 list of issues.

The only reason it is even being considered is because it helps improve the profile of the Ontario Liberals.  It is window dressing that makes them appear that they are in favour of public accountability when in actual fact, the government under Kathleen Wynne actually falls well short of anyone's standard in that regard.  (And there are multiple real life events to draw from to support that statement).  

To run a legitimate Region wide campaign will cost a candidate high six figures.  To illustrate this point, consider that in the City of Toronto, John Tory raised $2.8 million for his 2014 mayoralty race.  The City of Toronto has 2.6 million residents.  Therefore, Mayor Tory spent over $1 per resident.  Extrapolate from the 1.1 million residents of York Region and you get a sense of how much a winning campaign for Regional Chair will cost.

As no individual can self-finance such an expensive campaign, the eventual successful candidate will have to aggressively fund raise from those who can contribute - developers, government contractors, public sector unions, and lobbyists.

With this election, we would be giving great political influence to those with money, ignoring the advocates for the poor, for children, and the environment who are typically not as well financed.

Keep in mind that the Chair only votes when there is a tie and that has only happened once in 16 years.  Who would spend that kind of money to never vote at York Region Council?

But perhaps the best reason to oppose the election of the Chair is because there could be conflict with the agenda that the Chair was elected on versus the agenda of the rest of Council that comes from the lower tier Mayors and Regional Councillors who occupy the Council seats.

Presumably, the rest of Council has their mandate from their municipality's council on what issues they should champion.  I think the public has expressed their views already when electing their mayor and council.

The greatest number of public votes would come from voters living in Markham, Richmond Hill, and Vaughan.  Despite this, York Council has a balance in votes between those three cities and the remaining municipalities.

If a candidate wanted to win a public election, the way to go about it would be to promise all sorts of goodies to the voters who live in the big three but the cost of these goodies would be shared with the six municipalities who are receiving no benefit from them.

That would result in a deeply divided Council with the remaining six municipalities battling with the big three.

Do we really want to introduce into York Region the animosity that exists in Peel?  As the smallest of the Peel municipalities, Caledon representatives can (and in fact have) blocked Peel Council decisions by walking out of votes causing the Council to lose quorum.  It is not a good situation for anyone.

It is far better that we have a Chair (who currently only votes to break a tie) continue to represent the needs of all of York Region accountable equally to all of York Council.  The only way to ensure this is through the election by the 21 Council members.