Should Flin Flon city council have more input into how the provincial government spends dollars in and around the community?
Mayor Cal Huntley thinks so.
In late 2015, he wanted Manitoba party leaders participating in a debate to reveal where they stood on the issue of community consultation.
Huntley argued that when it comes to provincial spending on individual municipalities, civic governments “can best say” where the dollars should go.
As a case in point, he referred to the province’s $24-million (or so) upgrade of Highway 10 between Bakers Narrows and Flin Flon.
“We’re going to have a wonderful road into the community. I don’t want to downgrade that,” Huntley said at the time. “But if we would have had a choice, we probably would have allocated some of those funds to areas within the community that could have used an upgrade that would have more benefitted the whole population.”
That Huntley would prefer some of that cash be doled out to city projects rather than provincial ones is unsurprising; he’s the mayor of Flin Flon, not the premier of Manitoba.
But is there truth to the notion that civic governments “can best say” where provincial dollars should flow?
Do the mayor and city councillors really have a better read of public opinion than politicians at higher levels of government?
It seems unlikely given that provincial and federal politicos can often refer to public polling to learn how folks feel about
hot-button matters.
From polling we know, for instance, that most Canadians support marijuana legalization, favour physician-assisted suicide and oppose the federal government’s recent multimillion-dollar settlement with Omar Khadr.
Polling is imperfect, sure, but it can provide valuable guidance to leaders who otherwise have no tangible way of knowing where the majority of
their constituents stand on the issues.
While politicians who “govern by the polls” are sometimes dismissed as cowards, they are actually doing what we would all hope they would – respecting the wishes of the largest segment of people.
At the municipal level, in Flin Flon and other smaller communities, there are no scientifically validated polls to assist mayors and councillors in navigating the waters of public opinion.
What’s more, only 35 per cent of eligible Flin Flonners cast ballots in the 2014 civic election; just 12 per cent participated in a 2016 by-election to fill a vacant council seat.
Public feedback vis-à-vis city matters is at low levels. Few letters and emails from residents are on the council agenda these days, and scant numbers of folks attend council meetings.
Residents tend to make their voices heard only when they strongly oppose a particular policy, and even then the number of people engaged is usually small.
If 30 or 40 people attend a council meeting to speak out against something, as occasionally happens, how representative is that of the public will? Should councillors assume those folks speak for the majority?
Declining civic engagement has left our mayor and councillors to guess, in large part, as to whether they are steering this ship called Flin Flon in a manner that appeals to most residents.
Mayor Huntley and our councillors are good people who are doing their best. They have put themselves in a pressure cooker in exchange for little money and a lot of flak.
It would be nice if more residents took the time to offer them feedback, good, bad or indifferent, to ensure they are shaping the community most of us want.
