Like Wellington-Halton Hills MPP Ted Arnott, Puslinch councillors are concerned with the impact of cuts to the Ontario Municipal Partnership Fund.
Arnott recently wrote to the minister to voice his concerns.
“It has been brought to my attention that your Government plans to continue massive cuts to the Ontario Municipal Partnership Fund (OMPF) which has been in place for years to support municipal hudgets.”
“These cuts can best be characterized as downloading by stealth.”
Arnott noted that in 2012, Wellington County received a combined total of $11.17 million in OMPF funding.
That amount dropped to $10.25 million in 2013.
Arnott stated that OMPF funding is expected to fall again next year to $9.42 million.
“This means that from 2012 to 2014 the municipalities in Wellington County will experience a cut of over $1.7 million,” Arnott said.
He asked how the cuts were determined and if they were applied uniformly across the province.
Arnott asked if the cuts were made based on the location or size of the municipality or was it simply based on tax assessment ratios.
He added “How can you justify these cuts? Was party politics in any way, shape, or form a determining factor in which municipalities were cut the most?
“Obviously, it would be fundamentally undemocratic and completely unacceptable for any municipality to be hit harder because of its traditional voting patterns.”
Arnott added that it was around the same time last year, when municipalities were informed of the cancellation of the Ministry of Transportation’s Connecting Link Program, another example of downloading by stealth.
He suggested this current decision, combined with cuts to OMPF funding “will have a serious, deleterious impact upon our many local municipal budgets across the province”.
Arnott believed this could mean higher property taxes, reduced services, or both.
“As elected councillors, they have to make difficult decisions every day, just as we must do in the Provincial Legislature.”
Arnott said “What you seem to fail to recognize is that our municipal governments should be viewed as our partners. You seem to fail to recognize that they should be treated with respect.”
He added the government “fails to recognize that ‘one-off’ decisions involving the complex provincial municipal financial relationship tend to disproportionately punish smaller municipalities which also tend to be least able to absorb them”.
He urged the government to reconsider the cuts to both the OMPF and the Connecting Link programs, and instead
“look for ways to help smaller and rural municipalities instead of hurting them.”
In Puslinch, the hammer has not hit as hard.
The 2014 allocation for Puslinch of $402,700 is only a few thousand dollars below last year’s allocation.
At the Dec. 18 meeting, councillor Wayne Stokley commented on the phrase ‘stealth downloading’.
“It’s something we’ve talked about before.”
He was pleased that this was an issue Arnott would be taking to the province.
“It’s great to have him on our side.”
Mayor Dennis Lever said the notice the municipality received also included the amount of social services which would be uploaded to the province.
Lever said that while the municipality would not directly benefit from that uploading, the county would.
An agreement between Wellington County in conjunction with the City of Guelph covers social services costs for the region.
