First Bothwell, now Blenheim: Second petition launched to leave Chatham-Kent

The call for leaving the Municipality of Chatham-Kent is growing with a petition being launched on the weekend in Blenheim.

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But just how far this petition and another one going in Bothwell and Zone Township will get with the province remains to be seen.

“We’re just fed up,” said Blenheim resident Rick Williams, one of the petition organizers, citing high property taxes.

He said there is also a strong feeling by many that everything goes to Chatham, citing a proposed $53-million community hub for downtown Chatham.

“They don’t care about the outlying areas,” Williams said of municipal government.

Like organizers of the Bothwell petition, he noted a report leading into the latest Chatham-Kent budget deliberations that suggested closing some volunteer fire stations and libraries upset many people. No fire stations and libraries are being closed

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The report was a response to a motion by South Kent Coun. Ryan Doyle that called on administration to find 7.5 per hundred cuts across the municipal operation that would have amounted to $16 million in savings.

Williams said these kinds of proposed deep cuts to rural services seem to be routinely considered during every budget deliberation.

“They do it every time and we’re sick of it,” he said.

Williams said news that Chatham-Kent faces more than $1 billion in future water and sewer costs has also angered people.

“The heck with Chatham, let Chatham be on their own and we’ll do our own thing,” he said.

Williams said he would like to see Blenheim and Harwich separate and would welcome Ridgetown if they were interested.

He said these communities operated fine before municipal amalgamation in 1998.

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“In fact we did it better than we’re doing now,” Williams said.

But South Kent Coun. Anthony Ceccacci points out funding from the provincial government was significantly different in the 1990s, prior to amalgamation.

“There’s a huge premise that the way the money is distributed to the municipalities is increased to go towards Chatham,” Ceccacci said.

He noted the challenge is that provincial funding received by municipalities prior to significant downloading by the province covered costs that were far less expensive.

Not only have costs gone up, the cost of rural policing is among the big ticket items that were downloaded to municipalities, Ceccacci said.

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Citing the downloading to municipalities over more than two decades, he said, “I think the one thing that’s being missed in this is the fact that there is a lot of communities that would not be self-sustainable to keep their current resources if they were to separate.”

Lydia Miljan, a professor and head of the political science department at the University of Windsor, has co-authored reports both on municipal amalgamation and de-amalgamation.

She found amalgamation didn’t save money.

But, Miljan said, “Any time there’s been a request for de-amalgamation the provincial government, and regardless of who was in power whether it was Liberals or Conservatives, have put in exceptional hurdles and they seem to be not interested in any kind of de-amalgamation.”

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Similar to the Bothwell, Zone Township petition, Williams said the plan is to get the Blenheim petition in the hands of the minister of municipal affairs and housing.

The Chatham Daily News contacted the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing to ask how requests to de-amalgamate are handled.

The response puts much of the responsibility on municipal governments to figure out.

“The Municipal Act, 2001, recognizes municipalities as responsible and accountable governments with the authority to make local decisions within their jurisdiction, including municipal restructuring,” stated an email from the ministry’s media relations team.

“The act sets out a process for locally developed proposals for municipal restructuring, including both annexations and amalgamations,” the email said. “Municipal councils are responsible for determining if municipal restructuring agreements with neighboring communities will be beneficial.”

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The ministry also noted a locally developed restructuring proposal is implemented by an order of the minister of municipal affairs and housing, at the minister’s discretion.

Comparing de-amalgamation to a divorce, Miljan said the biggest problems are the time it would take and “disentangling who paid for what.”

When asked if she sees a day when a municipality will be able to successfully de-amalgamate, Miljan said, “Personally, I don’t think it’s going to happen unless there’s a real groundswell of lots of communities dissatisfied and a process is created. ”

Getting out of the catchment of one municipality and moving into another, like Bothwell and Zone Township is proposing, could work, she said.

But Miljan pointed out de-amalgamation really isn’t a part of the Progressive Conservative government’s agenda and it clearly wasn’t part of the previous Liberal government’s agenda.

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Noting there are bigger, more pressing issues in municipal governance to be dealt with, Miljan said, “In the mid to short term, I don’t see anything on the horizon that would make a compelling case to go through all of that hassle. ”

When asked about the issues Miljan raises about de-amalgamating, Williams said, “Listen, even it doesn’t provide us savings, it’s going to prevent us from future increases.”

Randy Sterling, another Blenheim resident involved with the petition, said everyone involved understands “it’s not going to be an easy process, we know it’s going to take time.

“But, if we don’t than it’s just continue to be the status quo,” he said.

Sterling is concerned how single parents and seniors on fixed incomes are going to afford it if taxes and water and sewage bills keep going up.

While he knows residents have concerns, Ceccacci said his message to people is: “We’re stronger together than we are going to be apart.”

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