Comment
Crossing Danforth
One kilometre of the Danforth in Toronto serves more than 150 properties— businesses and residences. Thousands of people pay for the upkeep of each kilometre. On Danforth Road in Hillier, however, each kilometre serves five properties on average—fewer than a dozen folks to pay for each kilometre of the road.
It was a mistake to download rural roads onto property taxpayers in 1998. This funding method was never going to work. Too many roads, too few people. It was apparent then.
“These roads are being dumped onto municipalities that don’t have the tax base to support it,” said Sean Conway, MPP for Renfrew North, in 1997.
It remains an impossible burden 25 years later.
Yet some council members, armed with a new Roads Plan and a fresh mandate, believe they can make Mike Harris’s ill-considered ambition come true— at least in Prince Edward County. All it means is adding another $2,000 to your tax bill each and every year from now on.
It will crush any lingering notion of affordability, of any semblance of a diverse community— old, new, young, old, rich and poor. Instead, it will confirm the County as a place of old, white, wealthy, urban folks—with a place back in the city.
It is strange to think Council is preparing to cross the Rubicon—the point at which we can never go back—in a municipality that has steadily and aggressively made this place unaffordable. The property tax Shire Hall has extracted from residents has increased 4.5 times in 25 years. The population hasn’t increased at all.
But the people have changed. The 25,000 folks living here aren’t the same 25,000 here in 1998. Those of us from the city have mostly displaced long-time residents. Demographics was part of it. But bad policy and weak governance contributed to this community becoming an exclusive enclave for the wealthy.
Some council members are seeking to lock in this fate. There will be no coming back. If they successfully pitchfork $25 million more property tax dollars into the roads abyss each and every year from now on, there will be no mitigation or support scheme big enough to assist those on the margins. Even folks in the middle may not be able to withstand the tax burden some council members have in store for them. More likely, they will quietly give up and move away—as many have already done.
The council members leading this charge believe it is your responsibility to pick up Mike Harris’s failure and make it your own. No matter the cost. No matter what it does to this community. So shallow is their grasp of municipal history that they believe this is the County’s number one priority—and always has been. It is just not true.
Nearly every road captured in Shire Hall’s new Roads Plan was owned and maintained by the province until 1997. The province paved them, plowed the snow, fixed the potholes, and rebuilt the worn-out kilometres.
Harris’s goal in abandoning provincial roads was simply to cut costs—by dumping them on municipalities and property taxpayers. And it made some sense in Toronto—on the Danforth— and urban centres. But Harris never considered how rural communities would manage such an immense burden.
Now, imagine for a moment Council manages to push through this Roads Plan—that it extracts vast gobs of your dollars and throws them into a provincially dug hole. That it rewards the province’s bad behaviour. What signal will it send to Queen’s Park? Hint: A bad one. Doug Ford and his successors will surely be motivated to download more provincial services and infrastructure costs upon municipalities willing to download unspeakable costs upon their residents. It won’t stop at roads.
The bottom line is that this is not a Prince Edward County problem. More than a third of the 5,000 kilometres of roads Harris downloaded from the province to municipalities are located in eastern Ontario. Every municipality from Oshawa to Glengarry is in the same provincially-created predicament. It is an Eastern Ontario problem. It must be solved on this level.
How? It is a political challenge. And the solution must be political. This is how it might look: In 2017, the Association of Municipalities in Ontario (AMO) proposed a one per cent increase to the HST to fund municipal infrastructure. This plan must be resurrected, and the force of all eastern Ontario municipalities must be marshalled to remedy this 25-year-old mistake. One way or another, the province must be compelled to take back responsibility for its roads. Until then, we muddle through—as we’ve done for 25 years.
Don’t permit a handful of council members to compound Mike Harris’s error. Don’t let them turn Shire Hall into one big roads department—that does a few other things on the side when it has a few pennies to spare.
Some councillors believe that Prince Edward County is just a network of roads. That Shire Hall exists solely to ensure a smooth surface in front of your home. That this is all you care about, that the things that make up a community—neighbourhoods, recreation, libraries, parks, gathering places, social services, and safety— are discretionary and disposable. To be sacrificed on the altar of roads.
Please tell them they are wrong. Before it is too late.
Comments (0)