The Rural Voice, 1992-05, Page 37I
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concession is a main thoroughfare.
The township concession is a short-
cut for people travelling miles across
the township. It is a route for
servicing the main industry of the
municipality: farming. It may be used
for drawing gravel that may serve
municipalities far beyond the borders
of the township.
In addition, the trade-off of roads
for welfare costs is one that is of
great benefit to large cities, but
won't help rural areas. Metro
Toronto, for instance, has 705 km of
road, says Denis Merrall while Huron
County's road department
administers 577 km, not even
counting the many more miles each
township administers. On the other
hand, welfare makes up a large cost
in densely -populated cities, while in
rural municipalities, even in bad
times such as the present, social
services has been a smaller figure on
the county budget.
The roads -for -welfare tradeoff
would cost Huron County $1 million
in lost grants for county roads while,
even in a bad year for rising welfare
costs last year, Huron's portion of
welfare costs was $900,000. But,
Merrall says, the real hardship will
come at the level of the townships,
villages and small towns. A typical
township, he says, could be looking
at a doubling of taxes, just to pick up
the additional road costs. He points to
the Township of Turnberry, near the
Huron -Bruce border, where a new
bridge was put up last year for $1
million, assisted by provincial grants.
If the township taxpayers had to pay
the whole bill for the bridge, it
probably just wouldn't have been re-
placed, Merrall says. If bridges have
to be closed, then the entire trans-
portation pattern of a rural township
can be disrupted, and it can be
difficult to deliver services to the
farming community.
If taxpayers can't afford to pick up
the whole bill for snow -plowing,
people with off farm jobs will have
trouble in getting to work and school
buses may not be able to get down
country roads in the morning. If
townships cut back on gravelling
roads, the roads will eventually
deteriorate. Rural people will be
looking at a decline in their way of
living, he says.
Merrall also warns that the roads -
for -welfare trade is the focus of many
people pushing for rapid change with
large municipalities hoping to have
this part of the Hoperoft report imple-
mented by January 1, 1993. But if
this part of the report is implemented,
there is no guarantee the rest of the
report will ever be put in place.
Homes for the aged, for instance, are
a large expense for rural counties and
full implementation of the Hoperoft
report would stand to save counties
$15.8 million a year, one of the few
areas counties would gain under the
trade-offs.
But while the report talks of
people taxes for people services and
property taxes for property services,
some people services would still be
left for the local taxpayer. While the
province would take over the cost of
"cultural services" saving Metro
Toronto $22 million a year (while
saving all the counties in the province
$1.9 million), libraries will tack an
extra $5.5 million onto the tax bills of
county taxpayers across Ontario. It's
one of the areas Nigel Bellchamber
Report shows
lack of understanding
of rural lifestyle
sees as a flaw in the thinking of the
report's authors. A city like London,
he points out, has the facilities of
university and college libraries which
can benefit all residents of the
municipality and which are paid for
by Ontario taxpayers. But rural
counties must totally support the cost
of their more limited library
resources.
Denis Merrall points out that in
Toronto, the Royal Ontario Museum
and Ontario Science Centre are
totally funded by the province while
local museums like the county
museums in Bruce or Huron, are
locally funded.
Only hinted at in the report is
another issue that could hit rural
municipalities as hard as the road
issue. Buried in the back pages is a
estimate of the cost of policing at
$100 per capita for the "free"
policing by the Ontario Provincial
Police. In March, another report
presented to the Ministry of the
Solicitor General by a committee
from Police Services Boards in urban
municipalities, talked about "free"
policing costing the Ontario treasury
$100 million a year. The report made
headlines in daily newspapers in
major cities.
About the same time Tom
Cunningham came back from a
ROMA meeting deeply concerned.
He had been told at that meeting that
the province was preparing to intro-
duce legislation that effective Jan. 1,
1993 municipalities with O.P.P.
coverage would be charged $350 a
household. In his township, he said, it
would mean a cost of $210,000 a
year. For most rural municipalities it
would mean a jump of 40 per cent in
taxes just for policing, he said. He
blames the lack of understanding of
the rural way of life by urban
politicians and breaucrats. "They
don't understand we don't need to
have our roads and homes constantly
monitored by police."
Work on the disentanglement
process is proceeding but
Bob Foulds, co-chair of the
Disentanglement Secretariat says
there will be opportunities for small
municipalities to air their grievances.
He said he is becoming aware that
different municipalities want differ-
ent things from the process and pro-
mises "Expert panels of consultants
will be set up for municipalities to
provide their concerns to."
But Bill Mickle worries that
municipalities aren't being treated as
equals in the process. "We should
only enter into an agreement if we're
treated as equals," he says, calling for
a municipal charter to protect
municipalities.
Denis Merrall thinks residents of
townships, towns and villages should
be going directly to their MPPs with
their concerns. Large urban munici-
palities are putting their staff behind
pushing for the changes, he warns. If
rural residents keep sleeping through
the issue, they may see their quality
of life greatly reduced. 0
MAY 1992 33