PATCHWORK

Once again the Town of New Tecumseth is left in the unenviable
position of having to draft regulations for a business after it has
already pretty much set up shop in town.

This time it's a methadone clinic currently being renovated for use
behind Groundswell Coffee House on Victoria Street.

The last time such a problem arose it was in the same neighbourhood.
The drug paraphernalia shop, Happy Dayz, drew the ire of neighbouring
business with its window displays of bongs and other drug accoutrements.

With no bylaws on the books to regulate where such a business, or any
other for that matter, could locate, council was left with no choice
but to attempt to regulate and discourage such businesses from
setting up shop in our communities' "front windows" through licensing
regulations.

There was much debate at the time about whether or not this was a
fair practice. One man's sin is another man's pleasure after all.
Obviously the business had a clientele, whether the moralists out
there liked it or not.

Now council finds itself in the same situation with a methadone
treatment clinic directly to the rear of the same location and
council has opted to take the same route by heavily regulating the
business through licensing agreements.

It's kind of like closing the barn door after the horse has already
escaped, to coin an over used cliche.

When Stevenson Memorial Hospital threatened to close the doors to its
birthing unit two years ago, the community was up in arms that a
valued medical service was about to leave town. Never before had
there been such an uprising about patients having to leave town to
seek medical services - in that case, giving birth.

The reality is that methadone treatment is a valid medical service.
Why then aren't people happy that a service such as this is coming to town?

New Tecumseth is a growing area. While it's nowhere near a big city
yet, with that growth comes some of the big city problems.

Let's face facts, many of the people the methadone clinic will be
treating are already here in our community. The ones seeking
treatment aren't the ones we really need to worry about frankly. It's
the ones who are not we need to be concerned with.

But opponents to the clinic are merely opposed to its location, not
the provision of the service in town. Some are skeptical of this, but
having spoken with many of them, we tend to believe they are sincere.

However, rather than repeated having to act in a knee-jerk fashion to
these problems, the town needs to adopt a bigger city mentality.
Rather than continuing this practice of scrambling to regulate on an
as-needed basis, a group or committee (perhaps the newly formed
economic development committee, or a sub-committee of the BIA) needs
to sit down and look at all the possibilities for businesses such as
bong shops, massage parlours, strip clubs and the myriad of others
that could choose to located in our centres.

Research can be conducted into growth centres such as London or
Barrie to find out how they regulated such businesses during their
growth to maturity. Then a report can be brought to council with
recommendations so we don't have to continue to deal with these
issues in a patchwork fashion.

Doesn't that just make sense?