Collingwood is hoping there’s power in numbers when it comes to asking the province for cash.
The town’s chief administrative officer (CAO), Sonya Skinner, has pitched council on a group effort approach to local transportation combined with neighbouring municipalities and will be part of the team hoping to bring the idea to provincial ministers at an upcoming conference.
Skinner said the group of mayors and CAOs from Meaford, The Blue Mountains, Grey Highlands, Clearview and Wasaga Beach that have been meeting regularly since last term keep bringing up transportation as a common theme.
Since transportation tends to be handled by current organizational structures of municipalities and counties, there are differences in the approaches to the public service.
“But when you’re looking at this area … traffic is growing for all of us, and we want to have a consistent way to look at that traffic growth,” said Skinner. “When we’re looking at, for example, Highway 26 growing and needing a bypass, it’s a multi-municipality endeavour.”
Skinner was bringing up the idea of a regional transportation master plan to Collingwood council as part of a list of presentation ideas for the upcoming Association of Municipalities of Ontario conference. As part of the program, municipalities can get brief meetings with provincial ministers provided they apply in advance.
If the group, representing the area municipalities and counties, can get a meeting with one or more provincial ministers, Skinner said that would be a positive step forward, and the minister’s political endorsement of the group’s plan would take it even further.
“It notionally puts funding aside … and hopefully also provincial funding,” said Skinner. “And it puts together an alignment of the various councils and also the provincial legislature to work together on this cross-boundary initiative.”
For the idea to work, both Simcoe and Grey Counties would need to be involved, along with municipal representatives from Collingwood, Clearview Township, Wasaga Beach, Town of The Blue Mountains, Meaford, and Grey Highlands.
“What we want to do is engage everyone and have one look-forward study that involves the ministry of transportation, both the counties, and all the local municipalities, and that we can do jointly and get some great results from a planning perspective,” said Skinner. “We also wanted potentially to look at some of the immediate pinch points to see what we could do in the next several years.”
The idea, said Skinner is to make sure traffic flows across the regions and municipalities involved, and do so without competing with each other for funding pockets for big projects.
In addition to working on an elevator pitch for the regional transportation group, Collingwood staff will also be asking for provincial minister meetings to talk about gas tax funding reform.
Specifically, Skinner said the town is the only municipality in the County of Simcoe that doesn’t receive annual funding through the Ontario Municipal Partnership Fund, which is a total of $500 million given to 389 municipalities across the province.
The municipal partnership fund is described by the province as a general assistance grant given to northern and rural municipalities, with specific support for areas with limited property assessment.
Wasaga Beach received $1.3 million in 2022 and $1.5 million in 2021 from the fund. Wasaga Beach receives “transitional support” which is meant to assist a municipality that is adjusting to year-over-year funding changes.
The Town of the Blue Mountains receives rural communities grant funding from the fund to the tune of $1.3 million in 2022 and $1.3 million in 2021.
Barrie and Orillia did not receive funds from the provincial grant last year.
Skinner said she’d like to petition the province to either include Collingwood in the funding or find another funding envelope to address Collingwood’s role as a “settlement area” within a larger rural area.
Council also supported staff applying for meetings during the conference regarding provincial funding support for the Collingwood Terminals project and for the expansion of the water treatment plant.
Staff will have to apply for the meetings, which are not guaranteed, and which are limited to about ten or 15 minutes long.
