Seguin Township Mayor David Conn said his residents don't need Parry Sound's help.
Responding to the Town of Parry Sound's threats to charge higher rates for out-of-town users using in-town facilities like the Bobby Orr Community Centre arena, Conn said his township has everything residents need.
"We're full service," Conn said during an interview with the North Star Friday. "Whatever Parry Sound wants to charge is a decision Parry Sound can make, and make on its own, but all regional residents are welcome to use our facilities at the same cost as Seguin residents."
Last week, Parry Sound Mayor Richard Adams accused neighbouring municipalities of refusing to compromise, leaving Parry Sounders to bear the brunt of costs for regional assets, like the arena, museum and Charles W. Stockey Centre for the Performing Arts.
During a council meeting, the mayor directed Parry Sound staff to include fees or contracts for out-of-towners in the 2010 budget, citing the need for a funding formula for all municipalities that would be based on assessed property values in each township.
Mayor Conn said he'll continue to refuse an assessment-based formula — a formula he said would add a burden to some already overtaxed property owners whose tax bills rise substantially with each provincial re-assessment.
"Parry Sound wanting everything in town and wanting everyone else to pay for it just isn't on," Conn said. "I suspect that Parry Sound has launched and initiated so many capital-intensive projects they're feeling a financial challenge in the future and are concerned the only way to finance them is higher tax rates to residents. Fees to other municipalities is another way to do it."
Conn insists a population-based formula, the formula used by upper-level governments when dispersing funding, is the only fair way to fund regional projects.
"Increased assessments due to market forces have caused huge angst to taxpayers who've had huge increases and can't afford their houses," he said. "There's so much precedent for it, it's no question population is the most usual benchmark."
Parry Sound council members used the high prices of infrastructure connected to a new Canadore college campus as an example of the need for a regional funding formula.
Mayor Adams told his council members that Seguin and McDougall Township's, although likely to benefit from the new campus, refused to chip in on the $2.6 million cost of water and sewer lines to the building's Tower Hill site.
Both Conn and McDougall Mayor Dale Robinson have since said they were surprised by the mayor's remarks, having received no formal request for funding.
Both mayors said a sub-committee of the Regional Economic Development Action Committee that all three municipalities sit on worked to entice the college to the area, with the town offering it a parcel of serviced land.
Conn and Robinson both said they were surprised the site selected was unserviced, and that they would have worked with Parry Sound officials to find a better location, with infrastructure, but were never consulted before a site was chosen.
"Richard said Canadore wanted fully serviced (land), well, the Industrial park (in Carling Township) could have given land, but we never got the chance to have that discussion," said Robinson.
Both Robinson and Conn said that if the town had wanted help with funding the townships should have been involved in the process of choosing the land instead of just being handed a verbal bill. Neither municipality received a formal request for assistance, they said, just conversational requests from Parry Sound's mayor.
"McDougall didn't dismiss it out of hand, it couldn't have because I never brought it here to do that," said Robinson at McDougall's September 9 council meeting.
Canadore and the town have since changed the proposed location of new campus to Parry Sound Drive, where the cost to the Town of Parry Sound will drop to less than $1 million.
Responding to Adams' complaints about a lack of cooperation, Mayor Conn said he wants to see funding partnerships for new and existing regional assets, including a pool.
"I am the only mayor that went on the record to say I support a pool," Conn said. "I, the mayor — I can't speak for council — would be willing to pay for a third of it. I suggested twin rinks with a pool in the middle. I got absolutely nowhere with that proposal. Would Seguin council have gone for it? I don't know. Would I have tried? I would have tried like hell."
McDougall and Seguin officials also said they were surprised to learn Parry Sound council members questioned the viability of REDAC. During a REDAC meeting the day after Parry Sound's Sept. 8 council meeting, all three townships agreed the economic advisory committee was producing results, Conn and Robinson said.
"I thought there was a consensus REDAC was on track," Conn said. "I got no feeling form McDougall or Parry Sound that big changes were required. We think it's great that we're talking together. We've made some wins as far as Seguin is concerned."
Robinson said his council will keep an eye on the impact of Parry Sound's proposal to impose higher fees on outside residents.
"We'll have to take every situation on a case-by-case scenario," said Robinson "All we're really doing as a council of McDougall is looking out the taxpayers' dollars, making sure they're spent wisely."
McDougall already has a contract with the Town of Parry Sound to allow residents to use the town's library.
As far as the long-sought-after funding formula for things considered regional assets, including the Parry Sound and Area Airport in Seguin and Parry Sound's Stockey Centre, Robinson said REDAC was never set up to solve that issue.
— With files from Sarah Bissonette.