CENTRE WELLINGTON – At this year’s Rural Ontario Municipalities Association (ROMA) conference, Centre Wellington’s mayor said the township pushed for changes around Highway 6 including encouraging to begin the process of creating a bypass around Fergus.
In a phone interview, Centre Wellington mayor Shawn Watters said at this year’s conference he, CAO Dan Wilson, deputy mayor Bronwynne Wilton and MPP Ted Arnott had a formal meeting with housing minister Paul Calandra and his staff.
This conversation was largely getting Calandra up to speed about the township’s planned growth doubling the population by 2051. Much of this housing development, the mayor said, is adjacent to Highway 6 running through Fergus which is creating roadblocks for developers.
“We’re having issues with developments that are wanting to come on stream but they’re having issues with accessing Highway 6,” Watters said, because they need approval from the Ministry of Transportation (MTO) and therefore new housing is being delayed in the community.
“As we move forward, because the need for housing is great and we need to do our part on it, it can’t be a fight every time a development comes up and we’re looking to access Highway 6.”
The mayor was hopeful the minister can help facilitate a talk with the MTO on this but he also was looking ahead and putting the thought out there for an eventual bypass around Fergus.
“These things don’t drop into your lap overnight, we need to start looking at that,” Watters said. “In theory the MTO should be all over that because then it falls into their laps in terms of movement of goods and services without having to deal with the sort of growth around here.”
Watters elaborated the idea would be not to eventually build the town up to the bypass but to have it built around protected countryside, otherwise they’ll run into the same problem in the future.
Watters acknowledged the number of options for a route are somewhat limited because of the Grand River so his hope was the MTO would look at an existing crossing over it which would get “beefed up” in a way that makes sense for that north-south corridor.
“As we continue to grow, if we don’t figure a different route going up in the middle of Fergus, it’s going to become prohibitively slower because of all the proposed growth,” Watters said. “We just got to figure out a smarter way to go around Fergus.”
This was ultimately just a conversation with the housing minister with no concrete promises but Watters said he felt heard by Calandra and saw a lot of note taking by his staff. He also left the minister with a formal package about this.
He also had a brief opportunity to speak with staff at the MTO and transportation minister Prabmeet Sarkaria and left them with the formal package as well. He said there will be a formal meeting with the MTO at a later date.
Overall, he considered the ROMA conference a success as it provided an opportunity for networking he and other township officials wouldn’t get otherwise.
“I thought it was very good, very successful, we had lots of good dialogue with some key ministries,” Watters said.
