Get the Blog to Be More Productive......

-------- Your tax dollars at work ---------

My purpose in starting this blog was to showcase areas of SWSDA 's management that I believed would be enhanced with better management, transparency and accountability. To do so, I've shown samples and highlighted examples of what I view as abuse and improper use of public resources. Unfortunately getting people angry enough to do something about a situation that everyone is ignoring is often the only way to get the proverbial ball rolling. In part that exercise was designed to identify failures in the management of SWSDA and to challenge SWSDA's Board and municipalities to reign in and make accountable SWSDA's Board and staff.... especially Mr. Anderson.

The end result as evidenced by many of the comments postings is shock, outrage and anger against individuals. The need now is to recognize the problems with SWSDA's present governance and lack of public accountability and to move forward with solutions to fix the abuses and poor management while generating efforts to enhance public scrutiny and access to the inner workings of SWSDA.

A LITTLE HISTORY ...... AND ...... READING HANSARD...... in the mid-90s government held public consultations throughout the province. The public then told government that what was needed in rural communities were local organizations who could increase the ability of local groups and individuals in communities to plan, manage and develop themselves. Hence the original concept for RDAs.

RDAs were not to do development ... they were to help local communities to develop their own capacity to develop themselves. If communities needed to learn how to do business plans, RDAs would not do the plans but ensure local communities got the support necessary to learn how to do it themselves. If communities needed to do strategic planning, RDAs were to help them develop the skills and provide the technical assistance to enable residents of local communities to do that.

NOT WHAT WE GOT..... SWSDA does not build local development management capacity.... it stifles it by taking over the job and the associated money to do the work and/or recruit additional resources and then plays ponzi games with the funds behind closed doors with little accountability.

THE RESULT...... Shelburne County has less capacity to manage its own development now than it did 15 years ago.

The annual planning process... undertaken by SWSDA is a farce and produces no additional capacity or opportunity for local involvment in local development. A four hour meeting with two dozen local people "managed" by fifteen SWSDA staff and Board members once a year is simply a sop provided by SWSDA to meet its obligations to ACOA and the Department of Economic Development to "consult" with local communities. Worse still, no analysis is done before hand and shared with local populations and an agenda for discussing intelligently specific areas of interest is never prepared, available or followed. Nor is there any further analysis or planning done after the four hour session that is held once a year.

THIS IS NOT ROCKET SCIENCE .... and Shelburne County is not the only one to suffer from this abusive and non-constructive process managed by SWSDA's present crew of Directors and staff.

THE WORK BEING DONE BY EMILY TIPTON IN THE MUNICIPALITY OF SHELBURNE IS MORE LIKE THE EFFORT THAT NEEDS TO BE UNDERTAKEN HERE IF COMMUNITIES ARE SERIOUS ABOUT TAKING CONTROL OF THEIR OWN DEVELOPMENT.

Much more needs to be done by Emily and the community but it is nonetheless a beginning. I hope it won't get side-tracked by those with unfulfilled political ambitions who work for the municipality. I urge the newly elected warden and council of the municipality to keep on working at it..... you are on the right track.

My appeal ... to readers as we move forward is for positive recommendations to fix this broken, sorry excuse for a community development agency called SWSDA.

THE MORE IDEAS THE BETTER..... LET'S HEAR SOME!!

In the meantime I will continue to pepper you with examples of the problems generated by the sorry state of the governance of SWSDA....... I await your thoughtful comments.

Tomorrow I'll be talking about SWSDA's other staff members..... I can hardly wait to tell you stuff......

Ed