One of the key measures we take in our everyday lives for purposes of evaluation is how well individuals, groups, businesses and government follow through on what they have said they will do.
By that measure, Thompson's eight-member city council elected to a four-year term in October 2006, scores relatively high, although there is some unfinished business.
There have been a few notable exceptions. Rotary Park comes to mind. Council, faced with the one-time vociferous opposition of about 80 residents of the Deerwood area, many of them from Elk Bay and Lynx Crescent, killed off in less than a week last February Manitoba Housing and Renewal Corporation's plans to develop its first low-income multi-family four and five-bedroom townhouses and row homes in Thompson since 1990 in the Rotary Park area.
It was a face-saving, quick-fix solution that did nothing to address the lack of both social and affordable housing in Thompson.
But that misstep, while disappointing, was followed by more positive municipal signs on the housing front. Council, after the Rotary Park dust-up, had the backbone in the face of some last-minute opposition to stick to its guns in supporting the student housing planned for the new University College of the North (UCN) Thompson campus, with construction set to begin later this year. Manitoba Housing will own the buildings, but policy and management will be set by UCN.
In some ways, supporting the UCN student housing project is relatively easy for council. While they've taken some heat over the coming dislocation of the Red Sangster ball fields and the potential noise impact on animals at the Thompson Zoo, council has successfully spun the issue - and not unfairly on the whole - as primarily a matter between the Province of Manitoba and UCN with the big picture benefits to the City of Thompson far outweighing a few negatives.
Likewise, city council's unanimous vote last Nov. 16 to establish the Thompson Housing Authority, signaling it intends to get directly involved officially for the first time on an ongoing basis in affordable housing issues municipally, is another step in the right direction.
The vote represented a political sea change for the City of Thompson, which had historically resisted any and all appeals to establish such an authority based on municipal precedents in Brandon and Winnipeg, preferring to leave affordable housing issues to the provincial and federal governments.
Mayor Tim Johnston and Gary Ceppetelli, the city's director of planning and community development, were appointed as the first two members of the new Thompson Housing Authority.
The Mayor's Task Force on Housing, established by former mayor Bill Comaskey in September 2005, recommended the establishment of a local housing authority.
Johnston is a pretty savvy municipal politician. He knows that in politics timing is everything and he usually knows when to send out his message. His message as 2009 kicked off a year ago was simple: Thompson's "free" water free ride is coming to an end and residents should get ready to pay for metered water with the creation of a water utility.
The mythology in Thompson has always been that water is "free." That stems from the fact Vale Inco has been supplying the city's water at no direct cost since its founding December 1956 agreement with the province setting up Thompson, first as part of the Local Government District of Mystery Lake and later in 1966 as a town and since 1970 as a city.
While the water plant is owned by Vale Inco and the production of the water is not paid for by local taxpayers, the distribution cost once the water moves beyond the Inco property line is paid for by the municipality at a cost of about $1.3 million annually.
Now the city has asked the province for permission to pass a bylaw to borrow up to $4 million through debentures to establish a water utility, which it hopes to have in business by Jan. 1, 2011.
Most of that money - an estimated $3.5 million - is to be spent on the purchase and installation of the water meters. Installation of water meters is not cheap, as many of the buildings erected between 1958 and 1965 - a huge chunk of Thompson's housing inventory - were not designed to accommodate water meters.
While the city is hoping grants from senior levels of government will defray up to 60 per cent of the water meter installation costs, there is no guarantee of that.
Repayment of the debentures not eventually covered by grants will be paid back under the general levy - meaning from local taxpayers mainly through property taxes. The bylaw spells out that between 2010 and 2024 "there shall be raised annually by a special mill rate on all the rateable property within the City of Thompson, an amount sufficient to meet the requirements for principal and interest."
As savvy as Johnston usually is, leaving the water utility issue until this late in the term to make the final push could prove tricky yet. Luke Robinson, the runner-up in the Dec. 9 council byelection, made it one of his main election issues. If it's not a done deal by October, it could be an issue at the polls.
Council, much to its credit, has for the most part done what it said it would do. And for the most part they've done it without the fractitious polarizing debates and personalities that have marked some past councils.
While all councillors can rightly take credit for those accomplishments it is the mayor who generally sets the tone of civility and decorum for better or worse. In the case of Tim Johnston the tone has been for the better.
Whether those choices and decisions have been wise and in the best interests of Thompson is for voters alone to decide should the incumbents seek re-election Oct. 27. The ballot box remains the ultimate referendum on our politicians in a democracy.
