The Town of Pelham Council…

The Town of Pelham Council unanimously endorsed at the December 17 meeting, the development of official feedback to be submitted to support the Niagara Peninsula Conservation Authority (NPCA) and concerns for the potential negative impacts of Bill 68. The NPCA has a proven track record of its efficiency and a comparative review of its staff/population ratio prove this.

Conservation Authorities are an important component of local government and local control. Changes to the original legislation that was developed by a Conservative Provincial Government is preferable to a total loss of local control over local water issues. The focus must remain on protecting source drinking water and mitigating potential flood damage to people, property, and the environment. Budgets need to be allocated to reflect the watershed and source water challenges and not be driven by population factors. There are very few benefits that would come from a the new Conservation Authority (CA) framework.

The proposed “Lake Ontario West” Conservation Authority is misleading, as it includes Lake Erie within its jurisdiction. It should instead be identified that it is also (at least in part) servicing Lake Erie. The Town of Pelham submits that the proposed name should mirror the approach for Huron-Superior and as such a corrected name would be Ontario-Erie or Erie-Ontario.

Some benefits of the CA could be found with respect to uniform operating procedures, usage of technology, usage of software and the sharing of administrative costs with respect to basic corporate services. Watershed and source water protection issues are highly local in nature, which is why the traditional watershed authority system has worked over the long term. Most opportunities for enhanced efficiency pertain to corporate size, somehow the focus on local water needs must be preserved.

Any accountable board should include both some skills-based appointees that have knowledge of sustainability, ecology, water quality issues, governance, law, planning & development and some accountable political representation. Allowing each sub-jurisdiction to choose a given number of representatives (based on geography and source water issues, rather than population) of each type will be important for functionality and to avoid favouritism towards large populations that have small geographies.

The Conservation Authority budget process needs to be done during the summer or early fall to support a transparent and consultative budgeting process across member municipalities. It would be ideal to have the CA use Canada Day as a fiscal year-end. Municipalities, which provide more than half the Conservation Authority revenues, need to receive the financial request from the CA in time to determine budgets and a July fiscal year-end would allow for greater success in in this matter. Where possible, upper-tier municipalities should continue to manage payment and collection, a model that functions well in regional governments and could extend to Counties.

There should be a cap on the level of annual increase and potentially the capacity for a municipality or local jurisdiction to purchase additional services, such as planning services or parks management or tree planting or similar.

The regional conservation authorities can maintain and strengthen relationships with local communities and stakeholders through the development of advisory committees. The NPCA does have a well-designed committee structure that could be modelled, however, the best way to maintain these good relationships is not to amalgamate.