in Chatsworth, Grey Highlands, Southgate, West Grey
June 16, 2023
LETTER TO THE EDITOR — I’ve been following South Grey News coverage of the Grey Highlands Council’s decision not to waive or reduce tax penalties for Eli Prociw, whose disability pension snafu (not of his own making) prevented him from having adequate income to fully pay his residential property taxes for several years. Mr. Prociw is not objecting to paying those taxes, and thanks to the kind financial contributions of Susanne von Torne, Heiner Philipp and others, he is able to pay the taxes. It is the accumulated penalties for which he seeks relief.
Councillors Nadia Dubyk and Joel Loughead championed his case, but Municipal Council turned him down even though it has the discretionary power help him.
I confess I look at this issue in part through the lens of our municipal history. I’m forced to ask the question, “Is our municipal government more or less willing to make humanitarian exceptions to its rules in exceptional cases, than our governments were in the past?”
I would like to think that over a century and a half, our municipal officials have become more adept at seeing and sifting the human misery that sometimes underlies the relationship between the governed and their government. I would like to think our municipal government has refined our ability to make prudent exceptions to its sensible rules.
I would like to think we are better at it. But I would be wrong.
Let me take you back, for instance, to late 1896, a year I chose only because I’m already familiar with it:
In March 1896 Artemesia Township Council authorized its clerk to furnish five cords of wood for Mrs. Flynn, “she having applied for aid” and that D. McArthur be paid $2 per month for taking care of Mrs. McMullen, “an indigent, it having been shown that she cannot care for herself.”
In December 1896, Proton Council decided that “Geo. P., insane in county jail, and his family in need, the township taxes against his property be remitted.” Council also decided that $5 of its money be expended on “Mrs. Cooper, indigent” and that “township and county rates be remitted Mrs. Troup and her family, being in destitution.”
Also in December 1896, Artemesia Council decided that “the commissioner of ward 3 be appointed to try to make some arrangement for the keep of Fred Gee, indigent, for the winter months, providing he can get some responsible party to care for him for the sum of $6 per month”, that “Wm. Strain be paid $4 to provide flour for Mrs. Williams, indigent” and that “whereas Hugh McFadden had his barn and contents burned, and having no insurance, and he having applied to this Council for refund of taxes, be it resolved that this council refund $3.51.”
In November of that year, the Osprey Council granted Mrs. McArthur, an Indigent, $3 per month and the Reeve issued an order for $6, being her first two months’ allowance. It also authorized “an order in favor of John Speers for $1.50 for a truss for P. Ottewell, an Indigent.”
I could go on, but I’ve made my point. In none of these instances, nor in hundreds of other such instances in the past, were our municipal councils required to act in a humanitarian manner. But they chose to so, having evaluated each case on its own merit, under the watchful eyes of farmer-constituents who looked with disfavor on wasteful spending.
Fast forward to the present day and to Mr. Prociw’s predicament. Did our Council carefully look at his situation with the same sensitivity councillors applied more than a hundred years ago?
Apparently not. It seems their decision was not based on the merits of his case, but rather on a desire to avoid making a humanitarian decision that would require judging whose story is more difficult than others, if municipal officials were quoted accurately in a June 9 South Grey News article:
“The municipality has never approved a request under Discretion, other than when correcting a clerical error. Grey Highlands staff and CAO Karen Govan described how difficult it is to decide on such cases and how they take an emotional toll on them. Govan also explained her point of view, in denying Prociw's previous requests for accommodation. ‘Everybody has a story,’ she said. ‘I think it's really difficult to say one person's story is more legitimate than other people's stories.’ She continued her elucidation. ‘We have gone to tax sale and sold people's properties out from underneath them,’ she said. ‘Regardless of what stories are coming forward, I don't think any of us are in the right position to judge whose story is more difficult than others.’”
If I read Ms. Govan’s comments correctly, it’s challenging for our municipal folks to make difficult case-by-case decisions and it hurts them to make these decisions, so our municipality will avoid this pain by making no exceptions to its rules.
Fortunately, we have in our community people who make tough decisions about human misery on a daily basis, and who can advise Council and municipal staff on how to make these difficult decisions and to deal with the stress these decisions cause. I’m referring to the health and public safety personnel in our community – our police, fire, healthcare and social service workers who we constantly put in “the right position to judge whose story is more difficult than others.” There is also an extensive international multidisciplinary body of studies in the realm of public ethics, helping public bodies to make the decisions that our municipality considers so arduous.
If these dedicated public servants and knowledge bases help our municipal servants (including those we have elected) to learn how to make these difficult decisions, first of all by developing an ethical framework and procedures for identifying exceptions to their rules, then we may reach the level of calibrated sensitive concern for individual citizens and their plights that our municipalities exhibited 127 years ago.
John Butler, resident
Grey Highlands
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