The Town of Saugeen Shores is going to cut back its infrastructure development plans because of a reduction in provincial funding.
Council is adjusting its ten-year capital plan to complete projects that support growth, paring it down, while at the same time trying to grow the community to support the nuclear industry and all of the industries and services locally that surround it.
Mayor Luke Charbonneau says, “The problem with that is, that we are going to be under pressure to greatly expand our infrastructure so that we can welcome a lot more people to our community to build future nuclear projects— and forgetting even the future projects, just to sustain the existing projects that we’re doing here. We’re providing 30 per cent of the province’s electricity from here.” He adds, the isotope production at Bruce Power helps to sterilize 40 per cent of the world’s (single use) medical devices.
“We’re doing some big stuff in a pretty small set of communities in Bruce County and if we’re going to attract the people to our communities to do that work—that really specialized work, we’re going to have to have good infrastructure to accommodate them,” says Charbonneau.
A November 11th staff report says Saugeen Shores’ Ontario Community Infrastructure Fund (OCIF) allocation for 2025 is set at $1,263,455.
It’s a 15 per cent decrease from the 2024 allocation of $1,486,418. That’s expected to decline yearly. Charbonneau says, “To be conservative we’ve estimated that the impact over the next decade to our capital budget will be $13 million.”
Council had considered at its November 20th meeting on the proposed budget for 2025 that the reduction in OCIF allocation could have been offset by an increase from $49 to $108 on an average home to the dedicated Future Infrastructure Special Levy (Capital Special Levy). The special levy was created in early 2024 to fund about $310 million in capital projects over the next decade.
Charbonneau says council decided against more than doubling the $49 special levy amount, which will already increase annually.
He says, “We looked at it and said ‘Look, we can’t go back to the taxpayer and say ‘one year in, and we’re going to have to ask you for a whole bunch more money.’ He adds, “We set out a plan: here’s what it’s going to cost and we’re just going to have to live within those means. This is how we’re going to do it and we’re not going to go back on what we said last year. So we’re going to keep the levy increases where we said they would be and we’re just going to reduce our capital spending over the next ten years to cut that $13 million worth of spending out of the plan.”
“So that’s how we’re going to proceed. With a slightly pared down capital plan for the next decade,” says Charbonneau.
Back on July 8th, councillors heard a staff report about the unexpected reduction, and staff’s efforts to get clear explanations from the Ministry of Infrastructure to understand why the Town was getting less funding. The Town was given minimal information until engaging the public affairs firm Wellington Dupont, which managed to get them a meeting with ministry staff and some further explanation.
Charbonneau says the Province has a formula for determining OCIF allocations among municipalities, and adds it’s his understanding the Town’s statistics don’t make it a priority according to the funding formula.
“It’s down to our success as a community. Saugeen Shores has a high household income. We invest a lot in our infrastructure and our infrastructure is pretty modern and in pretty good shape.” Charbonneau explains, it’s not a political decision, noting, “They plug in statistics about your community into the formula and it spits out a result.”
He says, “I think there’s a good argument for why the Province and the federal government should be involved in helping us build infrastructure here…and the private sector.”
“We have one of the world’s largest operating nuclear facilities down the road and a lot of people come to the town as a result of that, and a lot of other good stuff going on in our community but it requires us to invest in infrastructure to keep up— and not only support our own community but support electricity generation and isotope production for Ontario, Canada and the world,” says Charbonneau.
He adds, “Hopefully, there will be another method for helping us out with that infrastructure investment going forward because we do need some help.”
