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Essa mayor calls for exit from the County

April 18, 2013   ·   0 Comments

The complaints continue to Essa councillors about the changes made to Simcoe County’s waste collection policy and the increased costs associated with the changes.

And Essa mayor Terry Dowdall says that he thinks that southern county municipalities should look at getting out of the county.

Deputy mayor Sandie Macdonald said that she  still hears complaints about the changes.

“I haven’t heard from anyone happy about it,” she said.

She said that smaller commercial properties with a few apartments will be facing both higher taxes with the change to an assessment based policy and will be limited to one bag per building.

“The people of this township are against the changes. The county isn’t picking up garbage at some locations and any residents are seeing higher taxes,” she said.

Mayor Terry Dowdall  said that he continued to get calls and expects them to continue as residents decide to take large items to the county landfill as part of the spring cleanup  and discover that the vouchers for $50 worth of trash are no longer available.

Dowdall said that a triple majority vote which requires a majority of municipalities combined with a majority of county councillors and a majority of votes would be needed to change the collection policy.

The mayor said that the issue had angered him so much that he seriously thinks that the municipalities should look at leaving the county.

“Assessment based spending is appropriate for social service such as welfare or hospital construction is good. But I don’t think that it works with garbage. Just because you have a high value house means that you’re going to have that much more garbage,” he said.

Dowdall said that the changes to the assessment basis for waste has proved a financial windfall for some northern Simcoe County municipalities which have lower assessed property values than in the southern part of the county.

The mayor of Ramara Bill Duffy told county councillors last week that his municipality had saved almost $150,000 with the changes.

“We have a strange theory of waste management with a lot of county councillors. They want to charge $10 per bag for garbage and have staff checking compulsory clear bags to see if they’re recyclables in them. I think that all this is going to mean is more garbage in the ditch.”

By Richard Blanchard 

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