For many local municipalities the Ontario Municipal Partnership Fund day of reckoning has finally arrived.
In Grey County seven out of 10 municipalities (we include Grey County itself as one of the 10) will be receiving less money in 2010 from the provincial OMPF program.
This is not a surprise. Several years ago the provincial government announced that it would be changing the OMPF program. Municipalities were told back then how the changes would affect them.
The impacts were stalled by several years of top-up funding by the province. That top-up funding is now finished and the OMPF changes are being fully implemented.
The Municipality of Meaford is losing $140,000 in grant funding. The Municipality of Grey Highlands is losing close to $400,000 in funding. Other area municipalities are also losing significant amounts.
The changes that are happening now aren't new. They were announced a long time ago and then delayed because of one-time extra funding that kept coming for a few years. Now, that one-time funding is gone and municipalities are being forced to adapt in a hurry.
The bottom line for property taxpayers across Grey County is that taxes will be going up. Taxpayers are not going to be happy with that reality, but that is what happens when the provincial government provides temporary funding to local authorities, but does not affix an end-date to that funding.
As long as that temporary money was flowing each year, local municipalities didn't have any reason to begin long-term preparations for how to mitigate the affects of the eventual OMPF reductions.
In our view, local municipalities now face two significant hurdles. First, they must deal with the immediate loss of the OMPF funds in their 2010 budgets. In Grey Highlands that amount alone is close to a 10% local tax increase - in other words: the lost funding is not small potatoes. Second, municipalities must also begin long term planning for the eventual loss of OMPF funding all together.
We believe, as do many of our local municipal leaders, that the OMPF changes this year are just the start. Eventually we expect the provincial government - with a $24 billion deficit - to significantly reduce the amount it sends to municipal governments in this province.
It is imperative for municipalities to begin planning for that eventually now. If they don't - the pinch in the future will be that much harder to bear.
