07/17/2021
According to the Ontario Ombudsman’s 2020 Annual Report, Ramara residents per capita, made seven times as many complaints as people in Ontario.
See for yourself @ https://rebrand.ly/rtombud See the statistics here: https://1drv.ms/x/s!AqgDzRHJM2UqgvVprLo8EBEE-MsH5Q?e=LAnLrr
Councillor Snutch asked about this at the Monday July 12, 2021, meeting of Ramara Council.
View a short 6-minute clip (the times below are for the entire Council Meeting) http://hcut.to/v/x8ZMCCM
If members of Council wonder, why Ramara’s per capita complaints are high compared to the rest of Ontario and Simcoe County they need not go further, than watch how they handle what should have been an alarming revelation.
@ 1:35:35 CAO Pinsent tells Council that 29,000 complaints were handled by the Provincial Ombudsman and most of them were frivolous.
What CAO Pinsent did not say was that in 2020, there were only 3,400 complaints related to municipal governments across Ontario.
@ 1:39:55 Councillor Johnson asks who filed these complaints. He is more interested in the name of the complainant(s) than the 15 complaints or why there were so many compared to the rest of Ontario.
Ramara Township officials and members of Council (aside from Councillor Snutch) seem to be unconcerned with Ramara’s outlier status. Their reactions dismissing what is an incredibly high level of complaints from Ramara explains the results. That there were no investigations by the Ombudsman from the 15 complaints in 2020 does not mean that there were not valid complaints. Mayor Clarke’s dismissing this because there were not any investigations shows “how things are done in Ramara”.
The Ombudsman’s 2021 Annual Report mentions what was a NOT A FRIVOLOUS complaint about Ramara without mentioning Ramara. Did Mayor Clarke forget that only because of the Ombudsman’s intervention, Ramara Township refunded $18,000 in illegally collected inspection fees to Lagoon City residents? Or Mayor Clarke, are you telling voters that Ramara Council actually returned $18,000 to Lagoon City taxpayers because of a frivolous complaint?
"A municipality issued refunds to a group of residents after we discovered that the fees, they were charged for property inspections were not authorized in any bylaw, as required by the Municipal Act.” Ontario Ombudsman’s 2021 Annual Report, Page 28 https://www.ombudsman.on.ca/resources/reports-and-case-summaries/annual-reports/2020-2021-annual-report
Even after the Ombudsman’s intervention, the intransigence of the LCPWC and three members of Ramara Council prevailed, and the bylaw was not repealed. That Ombudsman complaint about shorewall bylaws is now before the Superior Court of Ontario ONLY because you, Mr. Mayor and two other members of Ramara Council did not listen to residents. Had we not filed the application to Superior Court the Ombudsman would have further investigated our not so “frivolous” complaint about the shorewall bylaw.
Mayor Clarke you ignore residents Deputations to Council. You then call their complaint to the Ombudsman frivolous while comparing their complaints to your dissatisfaction with your baldness.
Mayor Clarke again and again you say there is nothing wrong because there were no investigations. Not surprisingly, under your leadership there is no interest or curiosity in why Ramara’s complaints in 2020 were THIRTY TIMES HIGHER per capita than the rest of Simcoe County.
You are asking Conservative Party Members in Simcoe North to select you as their CPC candidate. Your handling of the abnormally high level of Ombudsman complaints from Ramara is not what I want to see from my MP.
At this time last year, reporting on the impact of the first few months of the COVID-19 pandemic on Ontario public services, I observed that in mid-March 2020, “everything changed.”
