The North Simcoe Sports and Recreation Centre in Midland has been under scrutiny in recent years, and a letter of request to Tiny Township for help was declined along with reasons echoing earlier comments by Tay Township.
A letter from Midland dated in May had arrived at the recent committee of the whole meeting, which asked Tiny council for ‘neighbourly financial support’ of $25,000 (or $5 per Tiny household) to offset the estimated $1.8 million current annual deficit for the facility.
A week prior, Tay council had voiced reasons to turn down the request. They cited: the history of the NSSRC construction being paid by the province; the openness of Tay recreation facilities; Tay’s annexation and reliance on Midland and Penetanguishene as urban hubs; and Tay Mayor Ted Walker stated “at no time… during those discussions or at any time after… until recently, was it ever suggested that Midland was going to expect a contribution to the operation of the facility.”
In the Tiny meeting, Coun. Dave Brunelle read excerpts from MidlandToday coverage of the Tay meeting before stating he was in opposition to Midland’s request for the same reasons.
Mayor Dave Evans expanded upon the established ‘no grow zones’ which Simcoe County had attributed to Tay and Tiny over 40 years ago, as urban development would focus on infrastructure supply in Midland and Penetanguishene.
As a commercial tax base, Evans noted that Tiny was 99 per cent resident based with an annual $160,000 receipt, whereas Midland held a 65 per cent residential base but drew in over $6 million commercial tax revenue annually.
“Part of the responsibility of getting that $6 million was that there’s certain facilities like the North Simcoe Sports and Recreation Centre – not the ‘Midland’, the ‘North Simcoe’ – would provide services to the people of North Simcoe,” Evans emphasized.
Deputy Mayor Sean Miskimins noted the annexation of County Road 93, where the Mountainview Mall and surrounding area became Midland's responsibility.
“That’s now commercial land that Midland gets tax revenue for. At a 25 per cent tax rate, I think there’s a lot of bucks there that we’ve given up. If Midland needs to figure out another way to support this, then I think that’s a Midland issue, not a Tiny issue.”
Coun. Steffen Walma assured that if non-resident user fees were to be considered in the future, it would be a discussion at that time and could result in similar agreements as per library and arena usage throughout the North Simcoe and Springwater Township municipalities.
Following the meeting, MidlandToday spoke with council members on why it had become a growing issue recently. Walma said that there were in-kind contributions asked by Midland of previous Tiny councils with amounts going up but supplied no reasoning of exact Tiny facility users.
Evans added that it was a part of the Ontario Regulation 588/17 which made every municipality engage in thorough and transparent infrastructure and asset management which brought Midland’s rec centre costs to light, as with their own assets.
“It's finding a new equilibrium in terms of how things – especially infrastructure – is going to take a couple years, it's going to have to settle out. Penetang and Midland are trying to maintain the status quo; Tay and Tiny are saying ‘no, we want a different balance’,” said Evans.
Walma said, “This has definitely pushed the forward thinking: ‘how long is this bridge going to last before we need to fix it and how much is that going to cost us?’ Honestly, even in the asset management plan that we have with the 2.39 per cent – that’s at today’s replacement cost. That’s not the replacement cost in 15 years.”
Replied Miskimins: “You can only kick things down the road so far before you run out of road.”
The Midland request for neighbourly financial support letter can be viewed on the agenda page on the Township of Tiny website.
Archives of council meetings are available to view on the township’s YouTube channel.
