Cars and cameras came back to the agenda again on Tuesday night at Council, sort of like a bout of heartburn that lingers after you’ve pounded down a warehouse-sized jar of Rolaids.
The heartburn has nothing to do with Council itself, or with the administrative staff that toils night and day, it’s more a matter of entanglement with other agencies and municipalities, and being part of a situation where the provincial government decided to change course mid-stream and leave everyone hanging as they did.
A quick review reveals that an Auto-Theft Prevention grant was applied for by three different entities, Admaston-Bromley Township, the Ontario Provincial Police, and the Town of Renfrew. This was back in the day when there used to be a Police Services Board as an arm of the municipal corporation, which was the very thing changed by the provincial government when they decided to go to an amalgamated board containing several municipalities, including Renfrew. Our Police Services Board of the time saw an opportunity to support the initiative, since Renfrew was part of a back-road network of stolen vehicle transportation used by the bad guys in an effort to avoid anti-theft surveillance along the Highway 401 corridor.
It also had a side benefit, that being that the cameras involved could perform a double-duty as monitors for the downtown stretch of Raglan Street, where numerous instances of graffiti and hooliganism ate into the carefully cultivated atmosphere the town and the BIA — Business Improvement Association — had worked so hard and spent so much to achieve.
It seemed like a good deal.
But we piggy-backed, meaning that we collaborated with two other independent entities in order to apply for the grant and enhance our opportunity for a successful result. That’s where Admaston-Bromley and the OPP come in.
The provincial change to the Police Board structure and composition put the whole business in jeopardy, since the grant was applied for by two municipalities that have since had their police board business rolled in with several other municipalities, raising some significant questions as to what would happen with the already purchased cameras and cars. As a result, Yemen Electric is apparently the keeper of the cams, and the three vehicles, a Ford, a Chevy, and a Dodge Charger are apparently under lock and key in storage under the watch of the local OPP.
I have a large degree of hesitation with respect to those vehicles, and actually wonder if the OPP will, or already have, surreptitiously added them to their current fleet. Perhaps not as patrol vehicles per se, but maybe as the coffee go-getter, the Pembroke Courthouse personnel carrier, or the preferred vehicle of somebody wearing the brightest white shirt ever imagined.
With the demise of the local Police Service Board, obligations entered into by that board transferred to the town, so that means that the cameras, already purchased, might still be available to the town should the town wish to utilize them. The problem is that as a three-headed beast, the parties to the grant all had equal standing with respect to the division of assets as part of the original grant. That means we’ve got to come to some sort of understanding with Admaston-Bromley, that Mecca of car thievery to the northwest and west of us.
I don’t know how many cameras we’re talking about here, but I believe the number to be very small, somewhere south of a half-dozen. Apparently, the OPP had already come up with a location plan for the cameras, and although I’m not privy to that plan, I do believe the intersection of Highways 132 and 41 was one of them, which is an Admaston-Bromley thing. Beyond that, I can’t see any other realistic need for such cameras in a decidedly rural township such as this. I’ve been to downtown Shamrock, which is quaint I suppose, but it decidedly lacks a downtown. So if auto-theft suppression is a big need for such a bustling metro area, it would come as a shock to me. I suppose the same could be said for Renfrew, but at least we’re along the route the bad guys take after coming off Highway 132, so we make a ton more sense than a Shamrock. But we have to negotiate with these people to come to an arrangement.
So I guess this a bit of a lesson as to what happens when successful piggy-back grants fall apart for reasons having nothing to do with us. Teamwork is wonderful until it sucks, as it often does, and disentanglement can be a messy undertaking when everyone demands what they perceive to be their rightful piece of the pie.
The OPP comes out smelling like a rose, which is the way they always stage-manage it to be. No matter what happens with the three cars, the police force will still have access to the cameras for criminal investigations, so they can’t lose. Their site plan apparently included cameras at Bruce and Stewart Streets, Raglan and Monroe, and Raglan North and Raglan South, the so-called tourist attraction known locally as Confusion Corner.
I suppose an argument can be made that some cameras are better than no cameras, so a fifty-fifty split of the cameras with Admaston-Bromley wouldn’t be the worst result. But cameras located at the bookends of Renfrew Street only cover those two key intersections, and are of no value in any attempt to monitor the downtown of Renfrew. Even a camera at Raglan Street and Renfrew Avenue wouldn’t have sufficient coverage for the two, possibly three key blocks of downtown that are potentially subject to various acts of vandalism and poor behaviour.
In some fairness, I also don’t know if the cameras come in sets or are stand-alone, because if the latter is true, siting the camera in one direction leaves the other direction blind. Not the ideal solution for downtown surveillance coverage, although surveillance has a bit of a sinister sound to it.
The town is still down $18,000, money spent that has not yet been reimbursed by the grant. To recoup that cash, the town has to apply for it before March 31, the end of the provincial fiscal year and the end of Year 2 of the grant. The town also has to determine if it’s willing to move forward with the third and final year of the grant. This would, in turn, raise questions about who pays for camera installation, maintenance, and supportive operating systems that power the cameras and share the footage to a cloud-based server.
And finally, the cars.
What about them?
Seems to me that the three parties would each be entitled to a car, although what the two municipalities might do with a brand new Chevy of Ford sedan — bank on the OPP keeping the Charger — is something that eludes me. Whatever happens, it’s my hope that the municipalities don’t simply cede the vehicles to the OPP. If the police want all three, make them purchase them from us, so that we get at least some measure of legal consideration. I’d suspect that each vehicle would probably come in at around $60,000, maybe enough to off-set the cost of operating and maintaining our two cameras, or maybe four cameras if you consider all three grant parties splitting them evenly and the OPP still serious about anti-theft prevention. In which case they can also split the operating costs, if we’re to be completely frank.
At the very least, the police are going to get a new vehicle and access to all cameras. Sounds to me like they come out the main winners among the three grant partners. And for just over $100,000, they could run the table and get everything they want.
In all honesty, it would be so easy for Renfrew to simply wipe their hands of this and walk away. Let Admaston-Bromley have all the cameras and the OPP have all the cars. Or let them fight it out as to who gets what from whom.
I’m assuming the town has already been reimbursed, less the $18,000, for the cameras already purchased. Maybe just get the eighteen grand owed and get the hell out.
Not saying that’s the best solution, but perhaps the simplest.
NEWSMAGRENFREW 