BarrieToday welcomes letters to the editor at [email protected]. Please include your daytime phone number and address (for verification of authorship, not publication). The following letter is in response to a story titled 'Municipalities could benefit from regional water partnerships: consultant' published Feb. 5.
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The County of Simcoe has for the last year looked at changing the provision of utility services — water, sanitary, and storm. (It is part of regional government services delivery task force.)
The 16 municipalities in the county now handle this work. The thrust of the county’s report appears to be that the county should take over some of this work. I suggest that the local councillors, other than the mayors and deputy mayors who are on county council, take a close look at the question and decide if there is any appetite to transfer some or all of these functions to the county.
If there is no appetite for such a transfer, than why spend tax money investigating it?
The county’s position appears to be that a central administration will lower cost and possibly improve the service. This writer’s opinion is that there will not be necessarily lower cost.
In a larger system there is some purchasing savings, ease of raising capital funds, and it would eliminate difficulties caused by municipal boundaries, but these savings would be offset by greater administration cost. Technical ability and knowledge is equally available in either system.
So the real question is, do you want to run these utilities locally and close to the electorate or more remotely which increases the distance between the voter and the staff delivering the service?
I do not have any great objection to transferring water and sanitary service to the county. However, it should be all and not parts of the systems, with clearly 100 per cent of the responsibility resting in the county.
On the other hand, I suggest that storm/land drainage should be left at the local municipal level as this overlaps with site plan/zoning, road drainage and flood-control administration.
Konrad Brenner
Ramara Township
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