The Ontario government has handed the municipalities within the County of Wellington blank cheques totalling millions of dollars, but says the money is to be used to find efficiencies to lower the costs of running the municipal governments.
Kelly Linton is the mayor of Centre Wellington and the warden for the County of Wellington. He said by phone on Wednesday that the funding isn’t coming with a lot of specific stipulations on how it should be used.
“The only thing that is clear to us at the county is that the province really wants us to find efficiencies, so they have given us this one time fund in order to find efficiencies in how we do operations,” said Linton.
Wellington County as a whole will receive a total of $725,000 from the Ontario PC government as part of the initiative. Centre Wellington and Wellington North will each receive $618,175, while Guelph-Eramosa will be getting $613,775, Erin $602,673, Minto $591,214, Mapleton $581,800 and Puslinch $569,599.
“That’s always a tough one to deal with — whenever you get surprise one-time funding, you wonder what the catch is,” said Linton. “I really feel like if the province gave us money and told us to do something, it’s in our best interest to at least put a portion of that money aside to find efficiencies like they want us to.”
“I think if you look at all three levels of government, the municipal level is probably the most efficient of all of the governments,” said Linton. “When you take a dollar out of our budget, you feel it.”
Linton said the municipalities and the county are constantly looking for efficiencies. What’s different here is the one-time funding coming from the province to do the work.
“It’s a unique approach. We really wanted to use this money in a way in which we will see value down the road, so all of the municipalities put some of the money they received in this one-time funding from the province and put it away,” said Linton.
Each municipality will determine where the funding goes.
“I know Centre Wellington has identified that the majority of the money is going to sit in a reserve until the next budget cycle, where hopefully we will get more of an indication of what the province is going to do,” said Linton. “We are saving it for a rainy day and I think most of the municipalities are doing the same thing.”
A consultant will be brought in to work with each municipality and the county as a whole to see where services overlap and could be better managed and shared, said Linton.
“I am excited to move ahead with that efficiency review, but it’s going to be some hard work to find out more ways we can operate efficiently,” said Linton.
There doesn’t seem to be a lot of stipulations as to ow the funding is used or reported back to the province, said Linton.
“They made it clear this is one-time funding and we have received lots of indications that they will be cutting our funding in the future, so the message that we are getting loud and clear is that it is in our best interest to leverage this money to find cheaper ways of doing thing so that when future cutback come, we are more prepared for it,” he said.
Linton said if there is a reduction in municipalities’ funding from the province, it could result in higher taxes, a reduction or elimination of services, or dipping into reserves.
“Or a combination of all of those things. It’s not going to be an easy thing to do, because most of the municipalities I know are operating pretty lean already.”
