Rural Chatham-Kent is in crisis when it comes to bridges, and the finger of blame can point in several directions.
First, municipal councilors will tell you that before amalgamation, bridge repair was funded up to 80 per cent by the province. Those funds have disappeared.
Next, administration will tell council they have been preaching for a decade that council needed to make lifecycle funding for infrastructure needs a budget priority, something that always seems to be ignored in favour of other priorities or a demand for a zero per cent tax increase.
And then you have taxpayers, who want and need our infrastructure such as bridges, roads, sewers, water treatment facilities, arenas and lots of other budget line items to be fixed and up-to-date, but don’t want to pay any more taxes to get them that way.
With a $40 million infrastructure budget stretched so tight it vibrates, eeking out the $7 million needed for just the status quo for bridge maintenance and repair is a struggle every budget. And if West Kent Coun. Bryon Fluker’s notice of motion suggesting a three per cent farm tax base increase to fund bridge repair in Ward 1 goes ahead, despite opposition from the Ontario and Kent Federation of Agriculture, the road to full life-cycle funding is still a long one.
Our community’s economic well-being depends on our agricultural sector, which in turn depends on a transportation corridor that helps them do business effectively and efficiently – not going kilometres out of the way to get equipment to their fields.
The representatives of the KFA and OFA are correct in saying a more concerted effort must be made to get funding from the province for the unique needs of a community that has a population or more than 100,000, but is scattered over a large rural area with 830 bridges, the highest number of municipal drains in the province and a small industrial/commercial tax base.
Robbing infrastructure funding to fund other endeavours is coming back to bite council in the rear, and administration from the past 10 years has every right to say, “I told you so.” If we don’t want rural Chatham-Kent to turn into a series of large gated communities, a solution is needed quickly.
