An open letter to Mayor Bob Pringle;

Dear Mayor,

This is to let you know that I have updated my blog (at http://shininglightonchatsworth.wordpress.com/) with information about the Peter J. Marshall Award presented to you and to Mayor Barfoot at the annual conference of the Association of Municipalities of Ontario on August 17, 2014. The Award's objective is "to showcase instances where Ontario municipalities have implemented and can point to tangible, measurable outcomes from new, more cost effective ways of providing public services and facilities."

As you will see on the blog, I have compared the AMO's criteria with the information provided in the application for the Award, and frankly can't find much in the way of specific measures and actual results that I had understood the AMO was seeking. In fact, there is so little in the application that my first thought was that supplementary information must have been provided. However, the covering letter from the Executive Director of the AMO states explicitly that "... I confirm that there are no additional related materials ... ."

I can certainly see how the massive transfer of Chatsworth tax dollars to Sunset Strip businesses and Georgian Bluffs through the bio-digester Agreement has been cost effective from the perspective of Georgian Bluffs, but I'm having a little trouble understanding what the benefits are to Chatsworth in light of the facts that Chatsworth's average net costs for the bio-digester are $330,000 per year, and that in 2013 (the last year for which data are available to me), 96% of the septic waste processed at the bio-digester originated on the Sunset Strip.

Just in case someone reading these figures thinks that they must be typos, I'll write them out: the net cost to Chatsworth has averaged three hundred and thirty thousand dollars per year for 2011 – 2013 inclusive; and ninety-six percent of the septage treated at the bio-digester in 2013 was from the Sunset Strip (which, as we all know, is located in Georgian Bluffs).

I hasten to note that, if Chatsworth residents had all directed their septage to the bio-digester in 2013, there can be no doubt that there would have been massive problems stemming from inadequate unloading and storage facilities (even without the 2+ month generator outage), and further, that the net costs would have been much higher than the $307,737 actually incurred.

For your information, I am sending a copy of this email to The Owen Sound Hub with a request that it be published as an "Open Letter" to you.

Yours truly,

Trevor Falk
Chatsworth