Where’s the money?

By Graeme McNaughton/The Oshawa Express

The need to fix and, in some cases, replace infrastructure is a growing need across the province – and regional councillors are debating where that money should come from.

At the most recent meeting of regional council, councillors were asked to endorse a report by the Association of Municipalities of Ontario (AMO) which calls on higher levels of government to give more money to municipalities to deal with their infrastructure woes.

Durham Region is no exception to this. During budget deliberations for the 2016 spending plan, it was revealed that there is not enough money being spent to maintain the region’s roads. While the 2016 budget approved $23.7 million in spending, Nester Pidwerbecki, the Oshawa councillor who sits as the work committee’s chair, said that the region would actually need to spend $31 million in order to keep up.

It was also revealed that the region would need to find an extra $26.7 million by 2025 for needed maintenance, upgrades and replacement projects.

According to the AMO report, municipalities across the province face an annual infrastructure and operational costs shortfall of $3.6 billion – and in order to pay for that, there would need to be an increase of 4.6 per cent every year in property tax revenue for the next decade. The report also states that if transfers from the federal and provincial governments are unfulfilled beyond 2015 levels that number would jump to 8.35 per cent.

Oshawa mayor John Henry says that both the federal and provincial governments need to start chipping in more money in order to pay for these needed projects.

“We have all this built infrastructure that we need help with, and what we’re doing is asking the provincial government and the federal government to help us meet the needs of all the built materials – roads, sewers, all that stuff that’s underground – that needs constant maintenance,” Henry tells The Oshawa Express.

“We have these infrastructure deficits and some of our buildings, our social housing, it’s almost impossible to find the amount of money that we need to bring it up.”

However, not everyone is convinced that going to the province and the federal governments is the right path. Clarington’s councillor Joe Neal, said to his colleagues that rather than asking for money, the region instead needs to look at its own operations first.

“This is just municipalities taking the path of least resistance, asking for more revenue, yet never taking a hard look at how they’re spending money and I think that’s really what municipalities need to do,” he said in council chambers.

“There’s a spiraling cost of benefits – municipalities are paying benefits for their retirees. This will…make it a lot easier for the region to spend another $120 million in a few years on a regional headquarters, $55 million for new police stations, that sort of thing. I think municipalities in general need to take a hard look at how they’re doing their business and how they can save money.”

Councillor Amy McQuaid-England, meanwhile, says that keeping property tax increases low over the years has lead to municipalities, including Durham, not having the needed funds for infrastructure, and that until Queen’s Park and Parliament Hill step up, municipalities are going to be forced to make some tough choices.

“We keep saying that we don’t have the money, and we ask for more money, and the provincial and federal governments might not give it. So at the end of the day, I understand it is a bad political decision for some to say raise taxes, but we need to have a frank discussion about what services…it’s not keep it at two per cent and cut services, it’s this is how much we need in order to maintain and in order to extend services, but we don’t have that discussion,” she said.

“We cap how much we want to go at, we say two per cent, and then we don’t have any discussions about the fact that we probably need more and probably should be having hard discussions with our residents about what needs to be paid for in order for us to provide the services. And until the provincial and federal government actually give us money, we have to make hard decisions.”

The vote to endorse the report’s findings and recommendations passed through regional council, with only McQuaid-England, Joe Neal and John Neal voting against.