Saugeen Shores is facing increasing pressure to grow, and it continues to appeal to the provincial government for help support that growth.
Town reps brought three main issues to the Rural Ontario Municipal Association Conference in Toronto this week—all things they’ve brought to the province before, but haven’t seen much progress on, support for a family health team, restoring cut infrastructure funding and money to offset the cost of the new aquatic and wellness centre in Port Elgin.
The Town has been asking the Ford government to support its effort to create a Kincardine & Saugeen Shores family health team in the area. They brought the request to the province in 2024 at the annual Association of Municipalities of Ontario Conference last August as well.
Mayor Luke Charbonneau says, “That application went to the province last summer and they did not fund it, last fall we found out about that, but we haven’t given up on it.”
He explains, “A family health team is a great tool for recruiting and retaining physicians and we think we really need one in Saugeen Shores and we have a partnership, or we did at least have a proposed partnership with Kincardine which we hope we could revisit.”
Charbonneau says, “We went to the ministry and asked directly for them to support our application when it comes through in that next round (of funding) and get us the family health team, so we can get more doctors for our community.”
Charbonneau explains the communities would use their existing facilities, it’s about the province supporting and then funding the model.
He says, “It brings together the team. All the different players in healthcare providing all the different services and so that group has some cost and involves a different structure operationally within the healthcare system. This is why the ministry really needs to do it, because those aren’t things municipalities do, funding the work of physicians and other health care providers.”
Another issue the Town has been hoping to resolve is a big funding cut.
Saugeen Shores has been struggling with how to make up for a reduced annual amount of money from the province for infrastructure projects.
A November 11th, 2024 staff report to council says Saugeen Shores’ OCIF allocation for 2025 is set at $1,263,455.
It’s a 15 per cent decrease from the 2024 allocation of $1,486,418. That’s expected to decline yearly, with an estimated impact of $13 million to the town’s capital budget.
Charbonneu says, “In our 2025 ten-year capital budget we had to cut things like improvements to our operations centre, where our snow plows and trucks and things operate out of. We had to delay work on the Southampton medical building. We had to lower our ambitions around a new fire station. All of these things are facilities that are critical and core to the operation of the municipality in providing services to people.”
He says at the conference, they asked the Ministry of Infrastructure to look at its funding calculation to see how it’s affecting municipalities like Saugeen Shores, noting, “We are a small municipality. We are supporting provincially significant infrastructure like Bruce Power and we need more infrastructure support, not less in order to do that.”
The change in the way the provincial government calculates its funding formula doesn’t favour Saugeen shores. Charbonneau explains it’s demographics, a high average household income, and sufficient investment in good quality infrastructure in the past. He says compared to other communities in Ontario, Saugeen Shores ranks high, but the formula doesn’t take into account the demand on the community to support current needs and growth.
He says, “We can only ask the taxpayer to be on the hook for so much of that. The taxpayer already has a lot of obligations over the next ten years. We think that the provincial government with their capacity to fund things through income taxes and other things should help us fund those things and should not be cutting us and putting more burden on property taxpayers locally.”
He adds, “There’s a heck of a lot of people in our community who aren’t earning those big dollars and who can’t afford to pay much, much, larger property taxes and we have to try to build a community that works for them too.”
They’ve also been looking for the province to offset some of the costs of the creation of the Aquatic and Wellness Centre in Port Elgin which is now under construction and will include a gym, pool, and other fitness amenities.
Charbonneau says, “We just keep going back to them. We’ve applied for a lot of their grants. We haven’t been successful yet. We have a couple more irons in the fire and so we asked them to consider us for support and we hope they will,” says Charbonneau who notes, “The project is funded. it’s under construction. It’s not as though it’s waiting for certain amounts of money to build, we just think that regionally significant recreation infrastructure should have support of the province at some level.”
He says “We want the province to come in as a partner to offset some of the money the municipality going to spend so that we can have more fiscal capacity to spend on other priorities on the recreation side within the community. The sooner we can pay down the aquatic and wellness centre, the sooner we can do work on projects like the Southampton town hall or other important rec projects.” Work at the town hall and library is in the Town’s ten year capital plan, and Charbonneau notes it isn’t fully planned out yet, but they know it’s in the future, explaining, “We know we need to spend a fair amount of money there upgrading those facilities within the next ten years.”
In the end, he says, “I was really pleased with how we were received by all the ministries. They heard us out and committed to take away what we were saying and think about it, so hopefully we will make some progress.”
He adds, “These delegations and conferences are always about incremental progress. Getting our concerns in front of the government and hopefully over time we can make positive change and get the things we need for our community in partnership with the province.”
Those who attended include Saugeen Shores Mayor Luke Charbonneau, Councillor Dave Myette, Chief Administrative Officer Kara Van Myall and Manager of Strategic Initiatives Jill Roote.
