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.
Continue reading “DISENTANGLING FROM A GRANT”