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Selling off the assets
?At Monday night’s Council meeting, the dominant topic of discussion (as we report on page 1) was the imminent closure of the Zephyr Public Library. Or at least everyone thought it was imminent. Only toward the end of the meeting did a sympathetic Regional Councillor Jack Ballinger reveal that the original motion in budget sessions was to close the branch at the end of this year, thus removing its $36,000 cost from the 2012 budget, not this year’s. His statement, by the way, was also the first time that many of us realized Council was debating a two-year budget, a salutary innovation which has not been much ballyhooed by the Township.
As for the Zephyr Library, Mayor O’Connor said it was only when Council was told that the present staff librarian there was retiring in March, did the possibility of closing the branch earlier come up. Unfortunately, prior to Monday, that was the only date that anyone in the hamlet was aware of; as a result, they understandably felt the decision was hasty, without due consultation. Rookie ward councillor Pat Molloy has an opportunity to heal some wounds by undertaking that consultation now, and we hope the branch can be saved, perhaps, as one resident suggested, with volunteer staffing.
At any rate, while Mayor O’Connor was explaining the concept of hard budget choices to those assembled, trying to give them an idea of the challenge Council faced in trimming a great deal of money from the wish lists presented to them, she quietly dropped another bombshell which the crowd, focussed on Zephyr, seemed not to hear: that Council was investigating the possibility of selling Lucy Maud Montgomery’s Leaskdale manse to the LMM Society of Ontario.
An executive member of LMMSO tells us that this concept was floated to the Society in a hastily-called meeting just before its president, Kathy Wasylenky, left the country for two weeks. She certainly won’t be back before the two-year budget is presented this coming Monday. So it will be interesting to see how the potential sale of the manse is treated. We think the concept is excellent; in fact, we suggested in this space several years ago that it didn’t make sense for different entities to own the manse and historic church (the mortgage of which the LMMSO is hoping to pay off this year). We suggested then, and we reiterate, that the price should be a dollar; the Society can’t afford market value for the property, and the Township’s object should be to save on future operating expenses, not make a big sum on selling off a historic asset.
We’re also not sure that the LMMSO should be the buyer. For many, if not most, of the national historic sites across the country, the federal government, in particular Parks Canada, is the property owner. For most of its life as an NHS, the manse has been mostly ignored by Parks Canada, but for the last three years, the agency has been vitally involved in the manse’s restoration leading up to this fall’s centennial celebration of Maud’s arrival in Leaskdale. So maybe the Township should be talking to Parks Canada about taking the manse off its hands (and its books).
And maybe they should be talking to the Foster Memorial Committee (which is now a non-profit society) about taking over the Foster. Or to the York-Durham Heritage Railway about assuming the railway station. Or helping create a separate corporation to run the Music Hall.
It’s a fascinating discussion, and certainly a lot of municipalities are getting out of the property management business for the same reason our Council is considering it: to save tax dollars. But after so many years of the municipality paying the bills here in Uxbridge, it’s not something you can spring on the private sector overnight. Now is the time to begin the debate, but for a future budget, not the one coming down next week.
