Simcoe County municipalities combine cash, share services

Some questioning if we should become Regional Municipality of Simcoe

By Sara Carson Barrie Advance July 24 2015

For the greater good: That’s the County of Simcoe’s motto. But when it comes to funding costly water and wastewater infrastructure, it’s each municipality for itself, said Innisfil’s veteran CAO John Skorobohacz.

For 20 years, the town has been conflicted over how to service employment lands at the Highway 400 corridor. Under the county model, each municipality must fund water and waterwater infrastructure itself, or risk annexation if the services are extended from another municipality, Skorobohacz said.

“… You have this almost adversarial situation that develops all because of the (county) governance model,” he said.

Innisfil has already lost land to Barrie. In 2010, the province gave Barrie nearly 2,300 hectares of Innisfil, though this wasn’t related to sharing water and wastewater.

In June, Innisfil took bold steps to begin regionalizing water and wastewater services itself. InnServices, a corporation owned by, but separate from the town, will bring water and wastewater infrastructure to Innisfil’s lands slated for commercial and industrial development. And they’re looking for other municipalities to join in. Discussions will begin with Bradford West Gwillimbury and could extend further, Skorobohacz said.

But Skorobohacz’s said if we became the Regional Municipality of Simcoe, water and wastewater services could be shared without fear of annexation.

When Ontario began creating regionalized governments in the 1970s it did so, in part, to fund water and wastewater infrastructure, said Robert MacDermid, professor of political science at York University. Water and sewage infrastructure in York was instrumental in developing the northern part of the region, he said.

But there’s not always a benefit to all. When Durham became a region in 1974, residents in the small communities of Uxbridge and Brock questioned why they should fund sewage treatment plants on Lake Ontario around the growing communities of Ajax, Oshawa and Whitby.

“To some extent those grievances still exist,” MacDermid said, adding Durham’s small, northern communities still question if they’re being served as well as their southern neighbours.

Innisfil Deputy Mayor Lynn Dollin said she’s not advocating Simcoe County become a region, but said, in the case of water and wastewater servicing, Innisfil would benefit.

“Financially, for certain things, the regional model would work better for us… but I know that there’s been a lot of conversation at the county about regional services and that the county is not on board,” she said.

Barrie Mayor Jeff Lehman said Simcoe County isn’t ready to become a region. While the county is urbanizing in the south, it remains largely rural in the north.

“I can’t see residents of Midland or Severn or Ramara Township wanting their water bills to go up to fund services to Innisfil Heights or Bradford or Barrie, for that matter,” he said.

Lehman added a partnership on water and wastewater should be possible without annexation, saying partnering would be less costly than Innisfil funding the infrastructure on its own, even under the innovative model the town approved.

“The reality here is that jobs that come to Innisfil due to servicing employment areas will be filled by people from Innisfil but also from Barrie, Bradford, and so forth,” Lehman said. “I’ve never believed that competition for employers should stand in the way of logical co-operation among governments.”

Warden Gerry Marshall warns Simcoe County municipalities must start pooling financial resources now to prevent steep property tax increases. He points to a June report by the Association of Municipalities Ontario titled ‘What’s Next Ontario?’ It states municipalities will have to increase property taxes 8.35 per cent annually during the next 10 years to keep services and infrastructure consistent with today’s levels.

That means if you’re paying $3,000 a year in property taxes today, you could be paying $6,600 by 2025, Marshall warned.

“We really need to work together as a group to figure our way through that complexity because obviously we can’t be raising your taxes 8.35 per cent per year,” he said.

At the end of this month, county councillors will receive a report on regional policing and it’s also investigating regional transit.

Bradford West Gwillimbury already buys its water from Innisfil and the towns have shared a police force since 1997.

The mayors of Orillia, Severn, Ramara, Oro-Medonte and the chief of Rama First Nation meet monthly to discuss potential partnerships.

Marshall and county CAO Mark Aitken will visit all 18 municipalities, including Barrie and Orillia, to find out how the county can get involved in local issues that have a regional impact. InnServices, with its potential to bring jobs to Innisfil, is one example, Marshall said.

“If we invest and assist Innisfil with water and wastewater to help those employment lands move forward, that’s a good thing for everybody else in the County of Simcoe,” he said.

But Aitken said we don’t need to become the Regional Municipality of Simcoe to add regionalized services. During the past 15 to 20 years, the county has taken on more regionalized services through provincial downloads. And if county council decided to, it could regionalize water and wastewater, Aitken said, noting Oxford County did so.

“I would suggest to you there’s very little difference between counties and regions now in terms of service provision. It’s really just more of a name at this point,” Aitken said.

Oro-Medonte Mayor Harry Hughes, a county councillor of nine years, doesn’t support our area becoming the Regional Municipality of Simcoe. Simcoe County benefits from sharing regional services, such as land ambulance and social services, without the community disconnect that can come with a regional government structure, he said, noting regional governments have less decision-makers overseeing a larger population.

“We have the best of both worlds is what we have,” Hughes said.

The North Simcoe municipalities of Midland, Penetanguishene, Tiny and Tay are working together on a variety of projects, said Midland Mayor Gord McKay.

“We four municipalities have decided, even four years ago, that we had to co-operate for our own mutual benefit,” he said. “We haven’t really needed the offices of a regional government, or a county even to do that.”

The municipalities have created the Economic Development Corporation of North Simcoe, with county funding, to boost economic development in the region and the four municipalities are now considering a shared sewage plant. Midland and Penetanguishene have created a joint building inspection service to share the municipal responsibility and there are plans to create a transit service between the two municipalities.

McKay would like to see the partnership mindset spread throughout the north and south ends of Simcoe County.