Stokes Bay Ratepayers Association

Early Summer Newsletter
June 2004

To all members of the Association, “Welcome to the Summer of 2004”. I hope everyone had a nice Christmas and New Year. There are several important items to deal with so I’ll get right to it.

Notice of Annual Meeting

The first order of business is to announce that the Annual Meeting of the Association is to be held Saturday, July 3, at 10:00 a.m. at the Stokes Bay Community Center. Hopefully all members can attend, as there are several important issues that we of the executive would like to discuss with the membership.

Issues to be Addressed

The first issue to be dealt with is the matter of two executive positions that will be open at this meeting for nomination and election.

Mike Tyler, our past president and one of the original driving forces of the association, who has given us yeoman service whether it was attending council meetings to represent us or being the sober voice of reason to counter my sometimes confrontational positions during executive meetings, has resigned his position as trustee due to other commitments and will be sorely missed.

The second position that needs to be filled is that of Secretary. Reg Fortune, the present Secretary, has indicated the he is resigning his position effective as of the upcoming general meeting. Reg has indicated that he has become very frustrated with dealing with the council of the municipality and the bureaucracy and apparently informed the C.A.O. during a conversation with her that he would be resigning his position in the Association. For this reason, and as an honorable person, feels he must be good to his word.

News and Items of Importance

Now to the news, items of importance, and other things that have that the executive has been addressing since the last newsletter.
  1. As most of you already know, or have seen with your own eyes, Tamarac Road is partially complete. For those who haven’t seen it, the drainage lines are in and we have a nice new gravel surface to chip the paintwork on our vehicles and create a dust bowl whenever the road dries out. The Public Works Manager has indicated that things are going to remain this way until probably August at the earliest. Only in North Bruce would they pave a main tourist service road to cottages, campgrounds, and the Tamarac Inn during the height of the tourist season when the traffic is heaviest and all the kids are around. He has also indicated that the township will not be applying any dust suppressant to the road during the intervening period. Hopefully we can apply enough pressure to change this state of affairs.

    P.S. There are still no details forthcoming from council about where the Greenough Point development stands, except, that it is still going ahead. It even made it into the Saturday Toronto Star Homes Section in May.

  2. The executive has sent two letters to Council over the last eight months dealing with the issues (speed limits, street lights, roads, Greenough Point) mentioned in the last newsletter and felt should be raised with Council. The first letter, answered by the municipal clerk, not the Council, approximately two months after it was sent, basically said the township liked everything the way it was and didn’t see any reason for change. The second letter was sent restating the issues that were important to us and reminding council that our Association represented a significant number of ratepayers. It basically asked if they were serious about dealing with us and felt that the first answer they had sent was not adequate. We asked for their thoughts as to how they expected us to deal with them and were they even interested in dealing with us. After waiting another two months we finally received an answer from the Chief Administrative Officer, again not from Council, telling us that even though we represented a large group, we do not represent everyone. She also stated that if we felt an issue was serious enough, we could send a delegation to council or we could wait for a response whenever it got to us.

    The executive met and discussed this response, and after a delay to deal with the issue of the 2004 Municipal Budget and Taxes and my having to deal with some personal business, a third letter is now being sent to Council requesting certain information dealing with the Greenough Point development we feel is important to the community. We are also making various requests, outlining how we feel Council should deal with our correspondence and the issues we raise and, dealing with Council’s and the Administration’s habit of playing everything too close to the vest.
The 2004 Municipal Budget Exercise

As all the members with E-mail addresses registered with the Association and others who may have seen the stories in the Owen Sound Sun Times and The Bruce Peninsula Press are aware, I wrote a presentation to Council dealing with my impressions of the 2004 Budget and the secretive process by which it was arrived and presented to the public.

It was presented by the Association’s Treasurer, Martin Hogarth, at the Council Meeting, April 26, 2004, (see Budget Presentation 2004) set aside to deal with the budget. All I can say is, it sure got their attention. As was expected, representatives of Council disagreed, in the press (see Sun Times), with our assessment. But, I and some others on the executive feel any process where pre-budget meetings to set the spending estimates are not widely publicized to the electorate, so they can attend and take part, is not an open process. Then, to make matters worse, the information on the budget was supposed to be available on Monday, April 19, 2004, they held on to the information and only released it prior to the explanatory meeting on Wednesday afternoon, April 21, 2004, and only four days before the Monday, April 26, 2004, Council Meeting to pass the budget. This allowed taxpayers and the Ratepayers Associations only days to analyze and prepare a response representing their opinion to what has taken the bureaucracy and Council months to prepare.

The Mayor was quite proud to point out that the township had lowered the mill rate, for their part of the tax bill, and combined with a slight lowering of the mill rate at the County level, property taxes would drop slightly as long as the recently revised assessment of property values did not increase the value of your property more than approximately eleven percent. Now, I do not know how much each member’s assessment rose, but I do know from following real estate values in the press, that across the rest of Ontario vacation and waterfront properties rose from twenty-five to over one hundred percent, depending on location.

The other thing the Mayor failed to mention to the press is; Council unanimously, quietly, with no wide public notice, approved a motion put forward by the Chief Administrative Officer at the March 8th, Committee of the Whole meeting, requesting the County review all seasonal residential property designations with a view to changing them to full residential.

The reason for this, the C.A.O. stated, was the number of retirees who are now residing at their homes year round, and, the extra services they demand and require. I can’t wait to see what this does to property values and the potential windfall in taxes it may mean to the township. I guess the extra garbage pick-ups have a horrendous cost.


Well, enough ranting for now. I hope to see you all at the Annual Meeting and please talk to your neighbors about joining the Association if they do not already belong. As you can see from my earlier comments, it appears that the administration of the Municipality is only prepared to listen if you have the numbers. Unless we can get a ward system reinstated in the municipality where we have a councilor responsible to our wishes and votes or area local councils are established as in some other areas that were amalgamated, it looks like a strong association is the only counter balance to the voting power of Lions Head and Tobermory.

P.S. Copies of my submission to Council on the budget and the Budget documents will be available at the meeting or by request to the Secretary or myself or at the General Store in the Association Information Center.

Please, any comments or suggestions will be welcome at the Information Center, as always, or you can email me or a member of the executive.


Thank You,
Nigel H. Allwood
President, Stokes Bay Ratepayers Association
Email: allwood@sympatico.ca