Adam Prudhomme
Editor
Greater Napanee council is getting out of the business of regulating taxi fares in the community.
Following up to a meeting in December, council directed town staff to amend the taxi licensing by-law to allow taxi companies to set their own rates.
The motion was passed at their Jan. 11 meeting and the by-law revision is expected to come back to the Feb. 8 meeting. If passed the by-law would allow taxi companies to set their own rate without input from council though vehicles would still be subject to yearly safety inspections from the town when re-applying for their license.
Currently the town’s by-law requires any taxi company operating within the town-Napanee Cab the only one currently in operation-to seek permission from council when they wish to raise or lower their current rates. The revision was put in motion by a deputation from Napanee Cab owner Ron Yeomans in late December, seeking to raise the current fare.
“I would like to see a by-law that takes the town out of the rate control program that we have at the moment,” said councillor John McCormack.
Following the December meeting the town gathering public input on the matter.
Deputy mayor Max Kaiser supported the idea of the town stepping away from regulating fares, adding he hopes the town’s public transportation pilot program would soon be an option for those who don’t have access to their own car.
“I think that provides an opportunity for an option of travel between the upper shopping area, your Metro, No Frills, Wal-Mart area and the downtown area for residential access for those areas,” Kaiser said of the proposed public transportation program currently being developed in partnership with Loyalist Township. “I’m not saying I want to stay in the rate structure. I actually don’t want to stay in the rate setting business for taxi companies, but at the same I want to make sure that we’re not doing a disservice by letting the cab company go wherever they want to go. I hope that competition comes along and that actually makes for a better playing field. I think we see that in other jurisdictions and we should see that as soon as there’s more than one cab provider that we should see competition to the extent that rates become competitive to people but as long that happens quickly enough.”
-Council opted to hold off on creating a Police Services Board at this point.
Their reasoning being that Police Services Boards will soon be obsolete.
“I thought we had sort of beaten this thing to death over the last several months,” said councillor Terry Richardson. “We’ve had upper meetings with respect to the policing contract with the OPP. Just so the folks at home understand or realize, what’s happening is the Police Services Act of Ontario 1990 is going to be defunct and it should be defunct as of Jan. 1, 2022. What’s going to replace the Police Services Act, in which Section 10 and Section 5.1 in the contract information that we’re hearing about tonight, what’s going to happen in the province and it has already received royal ascent in 2019, have created a new act called the Community Safety and Policing Act. Within that act they’ve done away the Section 10 and the Section 5 concept so that everybody is going to be on the same playing field.”
Richardson said to create a Police Services Board now would be like going backwards.
“Instead of having a Police Services Board, what they’ve created is a very similar thing but because our policing is with the OPP they call it the OPP Detachment Board,” said Richardson. “These Detachment Boards are set up very similar to what a Police Services Board is. At the last meeting in May, which would have been May 25, we had to give notice to the province with respect to how our OPP Detachment Board was going to set up. We had a meeting, we discussed it and we are going to enter into a Detachment Board process with our four lower tier governments being Loyalist, Addington (Highlands), Stone Mills and ourselves. What was discussed at that meeting was the mayor or her designate or his designate would be part of this board so there would be four mayors, there would be two members of the public selected by the OPP detachment board as well as a provincially funded position, so there would be seven positions.”
Richardson said staff’s attention would be better put to use by preparing for an upcoming meeting with the solicitor general to discuss policing costs relating to the Quinte Detention Centre.
Greater Napanee CAO John Pinsent agreed that if the town did not signal their intent to form a Police Services Board they weren’t putting themselves at risk of missing out on any provincial funding.
“This in no way reflects the excellent work that the police officers do to keep our community safe,” said councillor Ellen Johnson. “This is ambiguous and I’m not in favour of it simply because it’s just not clear and it should be. The police officers who take care of our community will always be there to do that for us.”
-Council heard a report from manager of environmental compliance Kristie Kelly that both Sandhurst Shores Drinking Water System and the A.L. Dafoe Water Systems had received final inspection ratings of 100 per cent during the 2021-22 inspection period.
-Council has declared Feb. 13 to be Wear Red Day in Napanee to raise awareness for women’s cardiovascular health. In the request, made by the Canadian Women’s Heart Health Centre, it was noted heart disease is the number one killer of women worldwide and is the leading cause of premature death in Canadian women.