Media Release AMO Delegation August 2023 Minister Infrastructure

MEDIA RELEASE
Town of Shelburne  
203 Main Street East  
Shelburne, Ontario  
L9V 3K7  

August 22, 2023

Town of Shelburne meets with Minister, Infrastructure regarding Water Pollution Control Plant Project and Affordability (WPCP)

On Tuesday August 22, 2023, Mayor Wade Mills and Town representatives made a delegation to The Honourable Kinga Surma, Minister of Infrastructure at the annual Association of Municipalities of Ontario (AMO) conference in London, Ontario.

The Town of Shelburne has planned to accommodate additional residential growth to the year 2051. This includes adding over 2,000 new homes and approximately 5,500 people which would bring our population to over 15,000.

The meeting with the Minister was beneficial. Mayor Mills states that “the Town has demonstrated a commitment to support diversified housing and is working with many developers.  We believe that ‘growth should pay for growth’. We also believe that small towns in Ontario, like Shelburne, can play a major role in supporting new and diversified housing. As a small town we lack the ability to fund major capital infrastructure that is required for development.  Council would not support transferring the costs of new development on our existing local taxpayers”.

The estimated long term debt financing for the WPCP Expansion is:

Without adequate Development Charges (DC’s) which have been reduced or eliminated due to Bill 23, critical Town of Shelburne capital projects will be delayed or may become cost-prohibitive altogether based on the Town’s limited borrowing capacity and impacts to property taxation.

The Town of Shelburne respectfully requested the Minister consider:

1. Reinstating Provincial and Federal Infrastructure Funds such as the Green Infrastructure Stream of Investing in Canada Infrastructure Program (ICIP) or the Clean Water and Wastewater Fund (CWWF) to begin accepting applications in early 2024 for water and wastewater infrastructure to support the Provinces’ housing development targets and the significant funding (estimated at 30 million) required by the Town for a WPCP expansion.
2. Establishing an interim three-to-five-year program to allocate the land transfer tax collected by the Province, in whole or in part, back to municipalities to support water and waste water infrastructure.
3. Evaluating the impact of lost DCs on small towns due to Bill 23 by expanding the audits which are intended to inform future Provincial policies and programs, and which are currently limited to much larger cities or towns, to include a small town stream.  Shelburne would offer to be included and the list could be created in consultation with AMO. 

Attachments:  Town of Shelburne delegation to The Honourable Kinga Surma, Minister of Infrastructure, August 22, 2023, London, Ontario

Contacts:

Wade Mills | Mayor
wmills@shelburne.ca  

Denyse Morrissey | Chief Administrative Officer
dmorrissey@shelburne.ca

See Media Release AMO Delegation August 2023 Minister Infrastructure for a PDF Copy.