Mulmur struggles to lower tax increase
Mulmur Council held a public meeting as part of its budget process Wednesday morning, updating residents on a situation that could require an increase in the municipal levy of anywhere between 4.5 and 11 per cent.
Township treasurer Harry Bunker, who resigned his employment with Mulmur last week and was not at Wednesday’s meeting, had been working toward a 2.2 per cent increase, in line with inflation. Coming into the public meeting, with staff having made about $40,000 worth of cuts, there was a still a $204,036 shortfall in meeting that goal.
The suggestion put forward Wednesday, in writing by Bunker and presented by Clerk/CAO Terry Horner, was for the municipality to sell a parcel of land at the intersection of 5th Sideroad and 2nd Line. According to the report, the property would yield between $125,000 and $150,000 after real estate expenses and, once built on, provide a perpetual revenue stream of $3,500 to $4,000 in residential taxation.
The sale of the property, if it goes for $150,000, would bring the shortfall down to $54,000, which would then require a 4.5 per cent increase in municipal taxes. Without the sale, the increase would be somewhere around 11 per cent.
There were some suggestions from the audience on possible alternative cuts to the budget. Michael Monahan suggested that a decrease in the amount of road grading would result in cost savings while at the same time decreasing petroleum fuel consumption and air pollution. That suggestion, however, was disputed by Public Works Director John Willmetts, who said the Township was obligated to provide a consistent and continuing level of service across the municipality.
There was much discussion about the financial state of the North Dufferin Recreation Centre, which has operated at a loss in five of the last six years. Mayor Paul Mills recently approached Melancthon Council to see if they would contribute more than the $7,500 they have given to the NDRC budget over the past four years, given that roughly two-thirds of the kids playing hockey and figure skating at the arena hail from that municipality (Mulmur has contributed $18,500 in each of those years). The response from Melancthon, Mills reported, was that they would not increase their contribution. Wednesday’s conversation ended with the Mayor proposing a Town-Hall-style meeting of all of the stakeholders who use the facility, in hopes of finding away out of its current financial woes.
That left Council to discuss the possibility of selling the property at 5th Sideroad and 2nd Line, a decision that did not sit well with some of them. Councillor Earl Hawkins was the most vocal, equating the selling of land to “robbing Paul to pay Peter.” He cautioned Council against the move, pointing out that they’ll be faced with the same shortfall next year with no property to sell – and once the land is gone, it will never come back.
Hawkins then offered that Council should be figuring out what the maximum increase acceptable to residents is, and working toward that. In response, CORE president Cheryl Russell told him that Council received “a lot of blowback” after last year’s 4.9 per cent increase. If the increase comes in that high again this year, Russell advised Hawkins to avoid answering his phone.
Mulmur Township will hold a second public meeting on its budget on the evening of Wednesday, February 20.
Arbour Farms Traffic Study
Council received a presentation Wednesday morning from Dan Cherepacha, president of Read, Voorhees & Associates, the firm retained by Mulmur Township to conduct a peer review of the traffic study submitted with the aggregate license application for the Arbour Farms gravel pit on Airport Road.
That application is currently before the Ministry of Natural Resources, having been recently submitted for a second time after Arbour Farms’ original application, submitted in 2002, lapsed in 2011. The company’s original applications for rezoning and official plan amendments are still on file at the Township, and an outside planner has been hired by the municipality to judge whether those applications are complete and to advocate for the Township as the process moves forward.
Arbour Farms’ traffic study is divided into three parts: a traffic impact study, a geometric analysis study and a traffic impact safety study.
On the traffic impact study, Cherepacha agreed that the existing roadway intersections between the Simcoe/Dufferin border and Highway 89 would be able to accomodate traffic on the road through to 2016, including any increase associated with the proposed pit. Importantly, this and the other two studies anticipated the pit being open from Monday morning until noon on Friday, with no weekend operations.
The second study, focusing on geometric analysis, concluded that these limited hours of operation meant that no truck climbing lanes were needed on Airport Road. Cherepacha agreed with that finding, but disputed the study’s claim that the pit’s proposed access site provided adequate sightlines for trucks pulling on and off the road. Dufferin County policy dictates that site access should allow visibility of 230 metres from a height of 0.6 metres, roughly the height of a driver’s eyes. Looking to the north from the access point, the maximum distance that can be seen from the required height is only 206 metres. Arbour Farms maintains, since it will be mostly trucks using the access, and that truck drivers sit much higher up in their vehicles, that 206 metres should be acceptable. Cherepacha, however, disputed that.
The third study, focusing on traffic safety, stated that the average collision rate on roads representative of Airport Road is 1.03 collisions per million-vehicle-kilometres. The overall collision rate for Airport Road from 2005 to 2009 was lower than average, at 0.79 collisions per million-vehicle-kilometres. Based on the conclusion that the collision rate is a function of the existing road features and the composition of traffic, the study stated that the addition of truck traffic from the pit might increase the number of collisions by as much as 0.4 collisions per year as a result of increased volume on the road, but that the road’s collision rate would remain essentially the same. Cherepacha did not dispute that finding.
A public meeting mandated as part of the aggregate license application was to be held on Thursday evening, after the Echo’s deadline for this week. The deadline for commenting on the aggregate application is Monday, February 25. Site plans and reports are available for viewing at the Mulmur Township office or at the district office of the MNR in Guelph. A public meeting for the rezoning and Official Plan amendent applications will likely occur sometime in the next two to three months.
In total, Arbour Farms plans to remove 500,000 tonnes of gravel per year from the Airport Road site, operating primarily in the spring, summer and fall.
Dufferin County Garbage Dispute
Mayor Paul Mills received the permission of his Council Wednesday to have the municipality seek legal advice on the uploading of waste management to Dufferin County, set to begin on June 1 and resulting in significantly higher cost to Mulmur taxpayers than when garbage collection was handled by the lower tier municipality.
Mulmur will be joined by the Townships of Mono and Amaranth when it approaches its lawyers, as all three municipalities feel they are being affected negatively by the County`s move to take over waste management due to the fact that the costs of the service will be divided among Dufferin`s residents on the basis of property value assessments. This will translate to Mulmur residents paying 47 per cent more for garbage pickup than they did previously, even though service levels will decline – the Mulmur landfill site, for instance, will be closed.
Amaranth and Mono will pay 39 and 25 per cent more for their services, respectively, while Grand Valley, Shelburne and Orangeville will pay 41, 33 and 24 per cent less.
The grounds for Mulmur`s complaint rests in two areas – one, that voting at the County is based on population levels, giving Mulmur little control over matters. If garbage control is paid for by assessment, said Mills, shouldn’t voting be divided on these lines as well? Secondly, when the County’s municipalities agreed to the uploading of waste management services, it was promised that the move would result in the same services being provided and costing less for all County residents. The completion of the County’s proposed gasification plant was also tied into the agreement.
“There are definitely some questions we need answers to here, ” said Mills.
Fire Marshall’s Report
Mulmur received a long-awaited Fire Marshall’s Office report on the fire protection and prevention services provided by its three Fire Departments.
The report provided 30 recommendations for the improvement of said services, and asked that Mulmur (along with Melancthon and Shelburne, who share the administration of the three departments) come back with a timeline for following them within the next couple of months.
Watch next week`s Echo for a full report on the findings of the Fire Marshall’s report.
