City Coun. Vince Bucci was the lone vote against the only recommendation to come out of last week's first meeting of the joint committee.
After an hour of opening remarks, which saw all six members of the committee discuss their expectations, a majority agreed to ask for a staff report listing the services each municipality provides, which will be presented at the committee's next meeting in January.
"Personally, I was a little disappointed," Bucci said. "I thought we would be able to focus clearly on some short-term services to look at."
Bucci, Mayor Chris Friel and Coun. Dan McCreary represent Brantford on the committee. Mayor Ron Eddy and councillors Brian Coleman and Robert Chambers represent the county.
The recommendation originally discussed, which Bucci supported, would have asked staff to list services provided by each municipality, followed by the cost per capita to deliver those services, staffing levels and standard service requirements. There would have also been a report outlining concerns in areas the city and county currently share services.
Bucci said he wanted to see the two councils begin working together by first tackling the problems with current service sharing agreements.
"I think you need to know what the problems are in the various agreements we already have and solve those," he said. "By solving them, you then know the type of agreements you can work on in other areas. It doesn't make sense to continuously make the same mistakes."
Bucci voted against the recommendation when it was watered down to simply being a list of services.
"I put my name forward because I want to try to deal with these issues quickly rather than go to meetings for the sake of meetings," he said. "Clearly, we were just feeling each other out and that's fine. I would be really disappointed if after the meeting in January we didn't identify one or two items to try and deal with."
The city and county currently share management of several services, including ambulance service, social services and the John Noble Home. The new joint services committee was formed in the interest of finding new ways to share services that would save taxpayers money in both jurisdictions.
Each member of the committee agreed that the group should act as the table setter for areas the two municipalities might work together.
"I don't think this is a decision-making body," Friel said. "I picture this group as getting staff to initiate investigations that will have to be approved by our respective councils."
McCreary said not all topics need to be broached in the short-term.
"Immediately, maybe we could do things like tourism," he said. "The county has contractual obligations in policing. We would not want to consider doing that immediately. We can start setting the table for now, but let it come about at a time that is appropriate."
Other issues that received mention during the meeting included water, boundary lands, libraries and fire dispatch.
Chambers wanted the committee to consider how Six Nations leaders might be involved in discussions.
"I don't want to sour our relationship with Six Nations through this process," he said. "You don't want two partners doing something in exclusion of the third. I don't want it to be interpreted that some of our logical partners are being excluded."
Friel said the city currently has a motion approved to arrange a tri-council meeting with the city, county and Six Nations elected council.
The committee will meet next on Jan. 4 and meet monthly on the first Wednesday of each month.
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Sean Allen
Quelle/Source: Brant News, 08.11.2011
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