MINDEMOYA—With no government grants available to help out with making all its municipally-owned buildings accessible to everyone, Central Manitoulin council is alerting the public that tough decisions may have to be made in the future regarding some of the buildings and that taxpayers may be faced with an increase in taxes in the coming years.
“It would be nice to know where we are going to get all the money to do all of this by 2025 (as required by the province),” stated Central Manitoulin councillor Derek Stephens at a meeting last week. “It will cost hundreds of thousands of dollars (to make the municipally-owned buildings accessible), and there are no government grants available.”
“If we do all of this work we will be looking at hundreds of thousands of dollars in costs and there will be tax increases,” Councillor Stephens added.
“So in that case we should be spending money towards (making the buildings accessible) before 2025,” said Councillor Steven Shaffer. “We are looking at several buildings having to be made accessible. We have to start planning and putting money towards this long before 2025.”
Mayor Richard Stephens noted, “that is why we want to get the costing (on all buildings in the municipality to bring them up to accessibility standards), and then hold a public meeting on all these findings.”
Councillor Dale Scott said, “we will need very in-depth discussions on what our priorities are and which buildings need to be brought up to accessibility standards. And we need to look at which buildings will be done first, and which we may not be able to do and possibly have to close because of the costs involved.”
“We need to start to look seriously at what we can, and can’t do and what can be disposed of,” said Councillor Scott, “keeping in mind we’re here to look after all our taxpayers.”
Council passed a motion “to accept the revised 2019 updated draft of the accessibility plan.”
