I’m going to get some of this wrong, I’m sure of it. But I’m going to go ahead and report what I can, and if anyone out there wants to educate me, I’m easy enough to find. I’d ask the official types for verification, but they don’t have a strong history of returning messages or email enquiries.
If I was to wait for them to help me along, I’d be left stranded without a guide. So as best I can, the story moves forward.
In a previous article, I mentioned something about surveillance cameras and cars left in storage, the product of a provincial grant worked out between the former Police Services Board and the province to provide Renfrew with equipment to be used to combat car theft, both here in Renfrew and in the province at large.
I’m not sure how many vehicles go missing in Renfrew during the course of a year, but I do know that the town is part of a secondary transit route whereby stolen vehicles are driven from the GTA — Greater Toronto Area — to Montreal and by-passing the more closely monitored Highway 401 corridor.
The grant, worth just shy of $800,000 over three years, primarily concerns itself with the purchase and installation of surveillance cameras, along with a bait car(s) to serve as a lure for any organized professional car thief happening along Raglan Street on any given day.
The idea is that we trick the poor sop into going for the bait car, nail him on the camera, and bust the guy right then and there. Cue up the Law and Order music.
I can’t say I know what kind of car this so-called bait car is, so I can’t get a sense of how much of a temptation it may represent. I only hope it’s not a pick-up truck, ‘cause that might rope in too many of the local cowboys, which is not within the scope or purview of this program.
There are a couple of things I do know, and I’ll share those right off the hop. But there’s a number of things I don’t know, despite reading the documentation, something that honestly makes waterboarding sound appealing.
And then I have some questions.
To begin, here’s what I feel I know.
There’s this grant, operational for three years. It’s intended to be part of the province’s war on car and vehicle thievery. Our former Police Board, along with the local OPP and Admaston-Bromley Township, applied for it. They were successful. The money flowed to the Town of Renfrew, the parent entity of the former Police Services Board. The key pieces, the car and the cameras, were purchased. So far so good.
But then the province changed the way Police Services Boards operate, in that they decided to abolish them and replace them with some sort of Frankenstein’s monster of a detachment-based police services board where not just Renfrew, but all the little townships hither and yon had seats. So here we have an entity (Police Services Board) who had entered into an agreement with the province for that grant money, but now longer exists. But no problem, because legal obligations shouldered by the dismantled Police Services Board slide to the municipality, and that’s us, so it’s still all okay.
Until it’s not.
The local OPP has had a miserable son-of-a-gun-of-time trying to figure out how this all fits into the new provincial structure, not that they had any of this confusion when it came to closing down the Renfrew Community Network Centre on Raglan, prematurely and based upon a tissue-thin pretext that turned out to be totally disingenuous. But on this score, the black and whites couldn’t quite divine the lay of the land, the slope of the hill, the course of the creek, the size of the shoe, which is a really bad attempt at metaphor continuity to be sure.
Nevertheless, paralyzed by institutional inertia, maybe caution, maybe just institutional intransigence, the White Shirts that run the place claim they can’t ascertain the nuts and bolts of the grant in light of the revised provincial legislation concerning police services boards. A real head-scratcher if there ever was one. The kind of thing that keeps OPP deep-thinkers awake at night right after they put their shirts on the charger.
And so they slammed on the breaks so to speak, afraid that the ice was too thin to proceed with the mission of catching car thieves. And so into storage went the car and the cameras.
Tick tock.
They can still access the cameras for investigations, though, so they’re not entirely out in the cold.
The first year of the grant went for nothing, as in nothing happened other than money was spent. How much I don’t know. In one part of the documentation, it says that the grant money would be parcelled out in three instalments corresponding to each year, yet other documentation seems to indicate that the car(s) and cameras have already been purchased. There are tables included in the attached documentation following this article for all of you smarter than I tam to figure it all out.
So what’s new about all of this?
Tonight, at Council, this topic will come up as part of the stated agenda. From the look of it, it appears the Town of Renfrew is going to proceed with the terms of the grant insofar as they can without the OPP riding along in a sidecar. And the area of the grant where the town can make an independent go of it is in the area of the cameras.
I feel confident, based upon my reading, that the town is moving forward with the installation and maintenance of the cameras, as allowed for by the original grant. They intend to do this for as long as the grant is in operation.
I’m not sure what happens when the grant concludes with respect to camera operation and maintenance, but I’m going to assume that, since they’re already purchased, and by that time installed, that the town would move forward and assume all operational costs once the grant period ends.
This strikes me as being a lot better than assets simply sitting in storage while the OPP dithers, although the end-game with the vehicle seems to be up in the air. Again, I don’t know what kind of vehicle was purchased, but if we see an Audi driving around with OPP colours, then we have our answer, unless the lead White Shirt decided that would look cool as his personal vehicle while “on the job.” Or they could just leave it in storage for the express purpose of nothing I can think of.
No matter how Council proceeds, if they do move forward with the cameras, there are still nagging uncertainties by the look of it. For one, what happens to Admaston-Bromley? If Renfrew installs the cameras, and the OPP sit on the car, what’s left for the township other than a warm handshake and a firm smile?
And while I’m at it, what was Admaston-Bromley doing as part of the original grant application in the first place? Is car theft raging out of control in places like Douglas? Or Shamrock? Or is the latest example of a piggy-back grant application, whereby the chances of securing the grant are enhanced if there’s more than one party, or one entity, applying for it? I know Renfrew has a storied history with such applications, the best one involving a grant exceeding $9 million for an Indigenous centre to be built at Ma-Te-Way under the auspices of some shadowy enterprise called the Bonnechere Algonquin First Nation, a place I would love to take a closer look into. Ironically, this Indigenous group moved into the joint just as they were tearing down its Indigenous name of Ma-Te-Way and replacing it with the corporate name of a radio station that took the town to the cleaners when it came to naming rights.
Another time. Another story.
Then, there’s the whole issue of where the cameras would be installed, and nothing can be done there until a working group with terms of reference is established, because that’s the kind of thing that requires a committee, right?
I’m pretty sure me and my buddies could do it in five minutes, but I have no buddies, so there we are, back to nowhere.
As to the camera story, there’s a lot more here to write about if I could wrap my head around the details. I’m pretty smart when it comes to geo-politics, and I’m fairly astute when it comes to politics in general. I’m even good at math.
But I’ll be damned if I can figure out totally what happens when it comes to the town, or in this case, the town and it’s dance partners. It just seems that really simple concepts get all entangled in a hedge of some difficult-to-decipher language and reasoning. It could be just me who struggles with this, but since I’m the only one doing the writing here, it’s kind of an important thing that I get it right.
Attached are the documents provided as part of the agenda. Grab a tumbler of scotch and a couple of Tylenol and have at it.
Make sure the scotch is two fingers, as measured from the top of a tall glass.
NEWSMAGRENFREW 