ood morning, I am the…

ood morning, I am the Treasurer/Deputy Clerk for a small municipality of under 2,500 people. Although we are small in population, we are large in area and have many roads, bridges, water & sewer systems, and so on. The list is long and as much as I appreciate the recording of TCA I do not agree with Asset Management in a sense that many Municipalities are faced with deficits that aren't achievable. The fact is that it is beyond our control, our ancestors didn't save properly, assets were downloaded to us, our taxing ability is at its upper limits! My current reality is that we need to invest $161 Million dollars within the next 5 years. Out total tax levy is under $4 Million. A 1% increase in taxes represent $30,000. $30,000 barely convers an engineering study. I currently oversee TCA and most likely will be in charge of AM...but how? I do not have the tools at my disposal and council doesn't have the funds to provide me with these tools. in the end we will only know what we know now....that we have an extremely large deficit that can't ever be closed. We will keep investing in our assets with the help of Provincial and Federal Funding. 100% of our linear assets see investments from government funding as we don't have the funds to replace otherwise. We sometimes have trouble applying for grants knowing that we will have to fund a percentage of those funds. There are no other revenue sources for local governments. Any way we slice it we are taxing people.

However I did see that you are considering different sets of rules for different size municipality and to that I see CONGRATULATIONS. We are not a one size fits all province. We receive grants in some cases (Gas Tax) that is limited to the amount of population or the type of infrastructure we have, but in reality our cost to replace a road is often the same sometimes more then in other areas. We may replace some roads less often then some areas, but the cost to replace the road is no different.

[Original Comment ID: 209448]