The Blue Mountains council does not support an amalgamation of two area conservation authorities.
At its meeting on March 10, council unanimously passed a resolution opposing the possibility of a merger between the Nottawasaga Valley Conservation Authority (NVCA) and the Lake Simcoe Region Conservation Authority.
As part of its correspondence for the meeting, council received a letter from NVCA Chair Johnathan Scott explaining that NVCA had recently passed a resolution opposing any amalgamation.
The possible merger of the two conservation authorities arose in February when Oro-Medonte Mayor Randy Greenlaw circulated a letter advising that his municipality was interested in seeing the two authorities merge into one entity.
The Lake Simcoe Region Conservation Authority includes the cities of Barrie, Kawartha Lakes and Orillia, the County of Simcoe, the regional municipalities of Durham and York, the towns of Aurora, Bradford West Gwillimbury, East Gwillimbury, Georgina, Innisfil, Newmarket, New Tecumseth, Whitchurch-Stouffville and the townships of Brock, King, Oro-Medonte, Ramara, Scugog and Uxbridge.
The Nottawasaga Valley Conservation Authority includes the City of Barrie, the Municipality of Grey Highlands, the towns of The Blue Mountains, Bradford West Gwillimbury, Collingwood, Innisfil, Mono, Shelburne and Wasaga Beach and the townships of Adjala-Tosorontio, Amaranth, Cleaview, Essa, Melancthon, Mulmer, New Tecumseth, Oro-Medonte and Springwater.
The amalgamation suggestion didn’t gain much traction.
“It wasn’t supported for a number of reasons,” said Coun. June Porter, who represents The Blue Mountains on the NVCA board of directors.
Porter said an amalgamation was seen as an “unnecessary distraction”, lacked a business plan and would represent a burden on the participating municipal members. She said if an amalgamation happened, the end result would be unwieldy.
“The conservation authority would be huge. The Town of The Blue Mountains has nothing in common with Kawartha Lakes,” she said.
Coun. Gail Ardiel fully agreed with council’s direction on the matter.
“(Amalgamation) is not a good move. It would be too large of an area,” Ardiel said, suggesting that instead of a costly and disruptive amalgamation process, that steps be taken to address any concerns Oro-Medonte has about NVCA operations. “They could do that and leave the rest of Nottawasaga Valley Conservation Authority the way it is.”
Porter said NVCA’s acting CAO would be reaching out to Oro-Medonte to try and work out the issues.
In an email to CollingwoodToday, new NVCA chair Jonathan Scott (a councillor with the town of Bradford West Gwillimbury) said the authority is in the process of implementing a plan to improve its services.
“NVCA is working on an action plan to improve our planning and permitting processes to better serve our customers, faster. We’re grateful our municipal partners are recognizing this progress and agree that an amalgamation with another authority is unneeded, certainly when no business plan exists,” said Scott “We are committed to ensuring excellence in all we do and will continue to improve to better serve the public and our municipal partners.”
