On Berries and Bureaucracy

This lovely story illustrates the contortious logic that plagues decision-making within local governments--those venerable practitioners of amateur-hour democracy.

To summarise, berry farmers on Vancouver Island often face labour shortages during their crops' harvest period. When one farmer was unable to depend on his traditional sources of labour for the harvest, he decided to hire street kids from Victoria, whom he acknowledges do an excellent job.

The problem with keeping the street kids on as labourers is that they need to catch a rather early bus in order to get to the berry patch at an appropriate time. The farmer's solution--provide temporary living quarters at the farm in order to avoid the lost productivity of the kids' long commute.

Normally, the story would end there. But, as with most jurisdictions, our farmer had to present his case to a municipal Council in order to get approval to construct these living quarters. One would think that the Council would want to eliminate any procedural hurdle in order that a) the farm maintains its economic viability by having a timely harvest, b) to give otherwise unemployed street inhabitants both a place to stay and an honest day's work and c) take a social problem (homelessness) for which the municipality is largely responsible off of their hands.

A win-win situation for the city, you might state. Instead, here's what happened at the meeting at which this issue was considered:

"It isn't the first time Oldfield and the municipality have been around the block, and sure enough, Monday's encounter was fractious. Councillors liked the idea of helping street kids but some were concerned about the permanence of the structures."

And, to top off the non-solution:

"In the end, the application was forwarded to the Agricultural Land Commission, with council scheduling a special meeting for next Monday to deal with the possibility of interim approval."

Instead of resolving the issue to the benefit of all involved, Council got entangled in the bureaucratic mess it set for itself, instead of doing the right thing: getting out the way by letting a landowner maintain the productivity of his land while simultaneously alleviating a significant social problem. Does anyone else see the problem with this picture?