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A collection of Letters sent to the Editor of Cobourg News Blog and provided as a service to Cobourg residents.
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- 1693
Condominiums have had detailed building maintenance plans for decades but towns have not. With the passing of the "Infrastructure for Jobs and Prosperity Act" in 2015 and issuing Regulation 588/17, every Ontario municipality must now have a formal plan to maintain their stormwater infrastructure. Cobourg hired Watson and Associates, Consultants, to study our current stormwater infrastructure and to estimate the costs of future maintenance. In April of 2022 Watson issued a 60-page report which forecast that stormwater maintenance and enhancements would cost $1,633,527 in 2023 and even more in each future year. This is a huge increase from the $225,000 needed in 2022 and most other prior years!
In late 2022 Cobourg's previous Council grappled with their planned 14.5% increase in annual spending needed to fund additional management staff, increased stormwater management costs and other expenses. It was decided that the planned $1.6M spending on stormwater management infrastructure would be disguised as a "fee" rather than a property tax increase. Further they decided that the new "fee" would be hidden as a monthly charge on everyone's electricity bills rather than transparently as a separately billed annual charge.