RESIDENTS FIGHT ROAD MAINTENANCE DECISION
By Kirk Winter
Residents of a Kirkfield area waterfront community were not pleased when City of Kawartha Lakes Council decided against providing winter maintenance on an unassumed road on a fee-for-service basis for this winter season.
The road in question, McGuire Beach Road, services a community of approximately 107 homes. In the past, the road was fully serviced by CKL on a fee-for-service agreement. After an extensive review of their roads polity, Council has decided that regardless of what has happened in the past, the City will no longer service unassumed and private roads. This leaves residents who live fronting those roadways to hire private contractors.
Raymonde Blais Couture, President of the McGuire Beach Property Owners Association, made the initial request for service in January of 2019 with the support of Councillors Dunn and Yeo. Council promised to look into the issue and report back the second quarter of 2019.
Blais Couture expected to be contacted by the City about the issue, and was surprised when she discovered that at a September meeting, Council voted in favour of refusing to do any service on McGuire Beach Road.
Blais Couture attended Council on November 5 to discover the reasons the City gave for their decision, and why they chose not to contact anyone from the McGuire Beach Property Owners Association.
Blais Couture shared with Council that the road is partially City-owned and partially unassumed. In the past, the plow has simply cleared the entire road, turning around at the bottom of the road to safely exit from the subdivision. The City decision to only do the top half of the road that CKL owns raises a multitude of safety concerns for Blais Couture that include:
The plow reversing up the road to exit could cause problems for other vehicles on the road
The safest turn around for the plow is on the unassumed portion of the road
The new owner of the property on which the City would deposit the snow from the upper half of the road wants it to be put somewhere else.
Blais Couture argued that, as taxpayers, the McGuire Beach residents get no discount on their taxes for only partial winter service, and that the residents would rather pay the City instead of a private contractor for winter maintenance.
In a telephone conversation with Blais Couture, she expressed her frustration about the unreasonable expectations that private contractors have including wanting the full $8,000 winter fee before the season starts, or payment before each specific plowing. The cottage association does not have that kind of capital in the bank, and people are frustrated, believing they are being asked to pay twice for a service that most residents of CKL take for granted.
Blais Couture also shared her frustrations with me about the decline in City services since amalgamation. When the McGuire Beach subdivision was part of the old Carden Township, the road was serviced year round. Blais Couture estimates that McGuire Beach taxpayers contributed close to $325,000 annually to city coffers in 2019, and they are very disappointed how little they are getting in return for that money.
Council entered into discussions again on this issue, and the McGuire Beach residents gained a very valuable ally in their fight for service when Deputy Mayor Doug Elmslie seconded Councillor Yeo`s request that McGuire Beach Road continue to receive winter service.
Mayor Letham has made it clear at a number of 2019 meetings that the City is not legally liable for these roads. The additional personnel and trucks needed to take all these unassumed and private roads back into the City fold would be cost prohibitive. Letham has also made it very clear that the City does not want to compete with private contractors who have traditionally taken care of many of these roadways.
It is also obvious to experienced City Hall watchers that provincial transfers to the municipalities are not likely to be forthcoming in 2020. One experienced City hand who remembers the Mike Harris years fully expects the province to download less money and even more responsibilities to the municipalities, balancing the provincial books on the backs of Ontario`s towns and cities.
A recent CKL push for as close to a zero percent increase in departmental budgets suggests that Letham and Council know that the provincial taps are soon going to be reduced significantly.
In the end, the McGuire Beach motion was defeated, and with the early arrival of snow and treacherous driving conditions, the residents of McGuire Beach Road will be scrambling for someone to plow the unassumed portion of their road immediately.