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Mono objects to downloading of Cty. Rd. 8

September 23, 2015   ·   0 Comments

Mono Council has instructed its public works director to write County Council and the surrounding municipalities objecting to the suggested downloading of county roads to local municipalities. .

The Town had previously received a rationalization report from the County on roads and bridges they wished to download on the municipality, and were asked to review the methodology used.

Those selected by the County for Mono to take over are County Road 8 (the Mono Centre Road) and structures on Mono-Amaranth Townline.

“I believe some items were missed,” said the director, Michael Dunmore. “In my opinion they missed some weighing points for County Road 8 and ignored or did not provide enough weighted information for the structures on Mono-Amaranth Townline, either.”

He went on to explain that currently, those comments are all the County was looking for.

“The process now is to send the comments back to the County,” he said. “Either they will implement the comments, ignore them, or partially ignore them. This will be sent back to the Public Works committee at County, where they will either squash the project, or begin phase 2.”

Phase 2 includes the evaluation of the condition of the existing assets and provides financial reviews as to whether work should be done before downloading the roads or be absorbed by the municipality. Where it is not clear is whether the downloading would be immediate following the evaluation if they felt work did not need to be done by the county.

“I am asking that Council receive my report and provide permission to give it to the County,” said  Mr. Dunmore. “I’m also asking that Council ask the County for a chance to peer review Phase 2. I’m not quite sure how it slips into phase 3 from there.”

It becamee clear that members of Mono Council were not pleased with the way the project had been laid out, or the rationalization provided by the County.

“I found the whole thing kind of spooky,” said Councillor Ralph Manktelow.

“They started where they are and are giving away a very large number of kilometres of roads, but are only taking back 13 kilometres. I think Mr. Dunmore’s report is well done.”

“I support the work that has gone into this report, and along with forwarding it to the County, I would like to see it forwarded to the other municipalities as well,” said Deputy Mayor Ken McGhee.

“Mono has taken leadership on this issue and developed a rationale for stopping it. I feel the other municipalities would also benefit from seeing this report.”

One issue with the report and the project that Mayor Laura Ryan had with the downloading was that a comment had been made within the report that if lower-tier municipalities could not afford to repair or upgrade the road that was downloaded, they have the option to close the road instead.

“I just shake my head at the whole process,” said Mayor Ryan.

She explained that it was her understanding the history of the project came about several terms ago, when there was some angst at the County level on the uploading of the Riddell Road portion of Dufferin 109 from Orangeville to Dufferin County.

“It was considered to be cherry-picking in terms of what should and shouldn’t be moved around, so they determined a complete analysis of all the roadways should be done,” she said. “It seems that the municipalities who are being hit the most with this are the ones that can least afford to do the work.”

Council voted in favour of submitting Mr. Dunmore’s report, as well as rejecting the report from County on the grounds that as it stands, it lacks balance in the use of the review criteria.

They also voted to forward Mr. Dunmore’s report to the surrounding municipalities and allow him to inquire about the process of Phase 2 of the project.

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