At the end of the month, Centre Wellington Mayor and county Warden Joanne Ross-Zuj will be heading to Toronto in a final effort to convince the province to restore an annual grant.
The Liberal government told its municipalities in August that it is reducing some Ontario Municipal Partnership Fund grants. Those grants were originally issued to help defray expenses from amalgamation. For Centre Wellington, it could mean a reduction worth about $1.4-million. That equates to a 17% property tax increase in the budget unless the township can find other funds to offset the grant loss.
“We’re taking it very seriously,” said Chief Administrative Officer Michael Wood said at the special council meeting held Monday morning to consider strategic plans for township departments. “We would be in very good shape if we didn’t have this nut to crack. This $1.4-million shortfall.”
He said each percentage increase in taxes will net the municipality about $70,000.
The special council meeting was to consider the ramifications of strategic plan on next year’s budget, but now that will have to wait until the township hears the results of the meeting in Toronto.
Ross-Zuj said she has met with Perth-Wellington MPP and Revenue Minister John Wilkinson, who told them the province allocates the grants according to a new formula.
Ross-Zuj said Wilkinson told her he believes the provincial formula for the grants is “fair for everyone in Ontario.”
She strongly disagrees. That formula is based solely on population, which Ross-Zuj said is completely unfair. She noted he also told her municipalities that want to convince the province it is wrong should explain why the formula is unfair.
Wood said there are 172 municipalities that are adversely affected by the cuts. That means $70.8-million being withheld from them, even though that is a small amount of cash for the province.
“We’re kind of miffed they would pick on this municipal grant” to fight the huge deficit the province has run up in the past year.
He said the smallest grant cut for a municipality is $300, but it is for a small, rural municipality in northern Ontario where any cut spells difficulties. He added the largest cut was a reduction of $4-million, and, “We are definitely on the upper end. Eight or nine [municipalities] are affected to the extent that we are.”
He said Ross-Zuj has done a lot of work on the issue. She will be part of a delegation to the provincial government with the Western Wardens Association.
In a later interview, Ross-Zuj said the township’s nearly $1.4-million grant was reduced to $164,000.
“It’s a serious one for us,” she said, adding that MPP Ted Arnott has been lobbying Finance Minister Dwight Duncan and other government members over the seriousness of the grant. She said the issue appears to be urban versus rural. The province took the population of Fergus, added to that number the population of Elora and Salem, and decided to cut the grant.
Ross-Zuj said a geographic consideration should have been made. She said Centre Wellington has over 407 square kilometers of land, and Orangeville, with a similar population, has 15 square kilometers. She said the provincial method of calculation fails to consider a municipality’s expensive roads and bridges, and a number of other issues.
She believes the issue has again become one of urban municipalities versus rural ones. She said rural municipalities have much more infrastructure to care for in roads and bridges alone.
Centre Wellington is not alone in the fight locally. Mapleton had a grant cut of $49,300, and Wellington North got hammered to the tune of $454,100.
As warden, she will be arguing against all of those cuts and for geography to be a consideration if there must be cuts.
